PROCESSES&POWER
17
PAPERCHASE IMPROVES IT
AUTOGLASS MANAGES
INFRASTRUCTURE WITH IBM i
PERFORMANCE
DURING KEY UPDATE
D
istributing, retailing and warehousing Certi½ ed Partner, Apex Computers has helped
thousands of active products naturally its support staff understand how to operate
Belron, parent company of vehicle glass
create a lot of related information, the system and ensure they get the best out of
repair specialist, Autoglass has used
application performance management
which must be managed effectively for a the latest technology advancements.
software as part of a major project to unify
smooth-running operation. “I have been working with the Apex
its management systems across Europe.
Before overhauling its IT infrastructure, team for over 10 years and I look to them
Nick Burton, Belron IT strategy and
the systems of UK stationery retail brand, to support us with decisions impacting our
programme manager told Retail Technology
Paperchase used to cause problems on a entire technical infrastructure, not just our
that the time-critical nature of the services
regular basis. Their applications were bespoke, iSeries platform,” added Plaistowe. “I trust
Autoglass and its sister companies provide
out of date, dif½ cult to use and not delivering them to help me consult, design, implement
customers meant the performance of
the service they required. Consequently, the and support our IT infrastructure. Their
applications that serve its branches, call
business started to suffer with deliveries taking contribution is important to my business”.
centres and head of¼ ces had to be assured.
too long to get from the warehouse to stores. The iSeries has improved the business
After embarking on a programme to roll
“The old system we were using before we processes, providing the extra power that a
out new, custom frontline operations software
installed the IBM iSeries was unreliable causing growing business needs, whilst offering the and consolidate its ¼ nance, supply chain
us a lot of issues and wasted time. We were scalability to increase further as and when and human resources (HR) functions onto
looking for a solution that could manage our required. Oracle’s e-Business Suite, Belron ¼ rst rolled
merchandising, warehouse and stock systems” “From a user perspective we are getting out Precise software to Autoglass in the UK
said Neil Plaistowe, Paperchase’s head of IT. fewer issues on a day to day basis,” he
to gain visibility of application performance
“We wanted a solution that would provide continued. “We can now do more during our
and bottlenecks.
us with a low ongoing cost of ownership that overnight processing to meet our timescales
“Gaining visibility of how the applications
was also reliable, secure and ef½ cient and one and SLAs [service level agreements] and
were performing gave us the con¼ dence that
that could cope with the expansion plans of improve our customer experience.
the new systems would support the business
the business,” he explained. “We’ve upgraded our system twice to
during further roll outs,” said Burton. “There
Plaistowe knew exactly what he wanted as meet the growing business needs. We recently
were also side bene¼ ts around the ease of
he had 20 plus years experience of working upgraded from an i520 to an i525 increasing
capacity planning, central systems reporting
and performance information, as well as
with the iSeries platform at TRW, BRL Hardy the amount of processors and memory.
generally helping us to run more ef¼ ciently.”
and Burberry. “I have always been impressed “We are now looking at expanding the
For example, Precise was instrumental
with the iSeries as an application platform. It’s system i to logical partitioning to help us
in identifying some storage area network
reliable, stable and provides great processing move towards a franchise model. We are also
(SAN) hardware issues that were affecting
power and scalability” he said. interested in the 6.1 version of the operating
the speed of end-user response with some
The iSeries has brought industry standards system, which offers native encryption. With
applications.
and best practice to the staff at Paperchase PCI DSS [Payment Card Industry Data
“Precise will be key to the continued
and this makes their life much easier. IBM Security Standard] and other compliance
successful roll out of the new systems to
Premier Business Partner, HP Preferred Partner, strongly on our agenda, this could be a very
other countries in the coming months,” he
Cisco Premier Partner, and Microsoft Gold interesting feature” concluded Plaistowe.
added.
APRIL/MAY 2009 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
14-19 Processes & Power.indd 17 6/5/09 9:51:23 am
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