Chase-Pitkin
New POS System Preserves Legacy POS Application and Reduces Maintenance Costs by 80%
Situation
Chase-Pitkin is a successful regional Home and Garden retailer that has been meeting the home improvement needs of customers for over 140 years. Due to escalating help desk support, higher maintenance costs and new functionality requirements, a need developed to replace approximately 200 POS hardware systems in their retail stores. Chase-Pitkin was looking for a cost effective POS hardware solution that would be compatible with their legacy existing POS application software, reduce on-going support costs and provide an open migration path to upgrade or replace software in the future.
"We've spent a lot of time and effort developing a POS software application that suits our needs," said T. Christopher Dorsey, CIO / Controller at Chase-Pitkin. "Our approach was very specific, leverage our existing POS application while allowing the option to upgrade or replace that code in the future without sacrificing our hardware investment."
Solution
Ultimate Technology's Application Engineers met with Chase-Pitkin to understand their existing systems and the options being considered for future software enhancements. The existing store system was duplicated in our test environment to project the future capacity requirement and ensure that any recommendations would be compatible with Chase's current operating environment.
Chase-Pitkin worked with Ultimate Technology's engineers to evaluate potential configuration options and project measurable cost reduction in the proposed operating environment. Improved customer service from increased reliability and faster transaction speeds were also factored into the return on investment justification.
Chase-Pitkin selected Ultimate Technology as their hardware solution provider. The solution includes the UltimaNet 810 POS platform, a reliable, open architecture system that provides superior value, and optimal integration. As part of the solution design, Ultimate Technology also developed an emulator as well as device drivers to integrate the UltimaNet 810 with Chase-Pitkin's legacy POS application. The solution preserves Chase-Pitkin's hardware investment by providing enough capacity to incorporate additional software modules and a migration path to new software applications in the future.
The UltimaNet 810 was configured to remote-load a Linux image (operating system and emulators) from an in-store server when booted. One advantage of this architecture was a reduction in ongoing support and maintenance costs by eliminating the costly burden of managing software at hundreds of workstations. This would free up technical support personnel at Chase-Pitkin for other IT initiatives.
Results
Chase-Pitkin immediately saw benefits, financial and operational, resulting from their new POS hardware installation. On-going maintenance costs were reduced by 80% and on-site failures were virtually eliminated. Because the emulator and driver software developed by Ultimate Technology enabled complete compatibility with their existing POS application, they avoided more than $2,000,000 in potential application software replacement costs. A significant return on investment has been recognized, with a financial payback of less than two years. In addition to these financial benefits, Chase-Pitkin has seen an increase in cashier throughput by more than 35%.
Dorsey continues, "It was important that our partner listen to what we were trying to do, and to be open to alternatives. We found that partner in Ultimate Technology."