Splunk has made every team's life easier.
Key Challenges
Tool sprawl spanning Specsavers’ global operations created data silos, delayed incident response, and risked outages that could impact critical customer care.
Key Results
With enhanced detection capabilities and automation through Splunk, Specsavers resolves performance issues 10x faster, prevents outages, and accelerates new store openings and expansions into new markets.
Seeing (across your complex environment) is believing.
Specsavers started its Splunk journey in 2018 with a small proof-of-concept for store network monitoring. Soon after, the company expanded Splunk Enterprise Security (ES) and Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) across its infrastructure, security, and operations teams.
Now, all data — from security alerts to application logs — flows into one, unified platform that is easy-to-use and globally accessible. Ultimately, this single pane of glass enables Specsavers to respond to issues 10x faster, avoiding more than 500 P2 (major) and 100 P1 (critical) incidents in a typical month.
Performance issues that once took hours to detect are now spotted in real time — before it impacts online or in-store care — and get resolved quickly through automation. “The biggest win in my book is when stores say they haven't had any IT issues for a while,” says Andy Slater, observability and automation lead at Specsavers. “I peel back the curtains and say, ‘well, you did. You just didn't realize it because we fixed them faster than you could notice them.'"
This approach has shifted Specsavers’ culture. According to Slater, Splunk delivers the payload required for automation as part of the company’s AIOps approach, helping it save 25,000 hours a month in manual effort across the business. “Splunk has made every team's life easier,” he says. Instead of firefighting, they have time to automate repetitive, manual tasks. Now, teams can focus on high-level initiatives like solution design, blue sky thinking, and governance and assurance — all the while changing the lives of customers through better sight and hearing.
Outcomes
10x
faster MTTR
100+
critical and 500+ major incidents prevented in a single month
25,000
hours saved monthly through automation initiatives
Automating and standardizing global standards — at scale
Specsavers’ Azure-based patient management platform is an essential part of its business operations, tracking sensitive patient data like appointment information, prescriptions, and purchases. That’s why Specsavers turned to Splunk Observability Cloud to instrument every part of the system. Now, the company has end-to-end visibility — including metrics, logs, and traces.
“It's our core platform as we've expanded across Australia, New Zealand, and Canada,” says Slater. “And it’s been aided by the work we've done within Splunk Observability Cloud to establish global standards.” This automated, standardized, and structured approach means that they can turn the lights on “day one.” Regardless of continent, Specsavers loads metrics and logs into Splunk — providing access to real-time and historic data as soon as the store opens — enabling the company to accelerate expansion and scale technical operations effortlessly.
Specsavers’ increased observability and automation capabilities has also reduced the time it takes to open a new store. “The last step before opening is to check that all the IT systems are working, which was previously a 2-3 day process,” says Slater. “Now, with the help of Splunk, it's down to 24 hours.”
And once Specsavers starts collecting data from its new stores, that data is put to good use. “Data from Splunk is fed back into the retail side of the business, informing high-level, executive decision-making,” continues Slater. “Splunk allows us to really see data trends from our website and stores, and find correlations between things like advertising campaigns and increased web traffic. That information is invaluable to our marketing, product, and retail teams as we continue to look for better ways to serve our customers.”
A sharper vision for the future
For Specsavers, the results are clear: Errors and performance drops trigger automated workflows, resolving them without human intervention. Developers move faster, services stay online, and colleagues in-store can focus on helping customers find their perfect pair of frames instead of troubleshooting IT performance issues.
Looking ahead, Specsavers is rebuilding its patient management system into a microservices architecture, with Splunk at the center for real-time insights, automation, and scalability. The company also continues to evolve its digital-first approach. “We have a highly successful in-store operation,” says Slater. “But that trend will change over time, so the way our services are consumed will need to change as well.”
From preventing outages to enabling new digital services, Specsavers sees Splunk as a strategic partner in delivering world-class care to millions.
