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The Tile Shop, Inc. |
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Solution Categories
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Company Profile
The Tile Shop is a national reseller of fine tile and stone.
Their challenges are typical of growing companies, and The Tile Shop
continues to work closely with Alto on thin-client and related
systems.
Business Situation
The Tile Shop is a rapidly
growing company with a central office in Plymouth, Minnesota with 15
stores located throughout the Midwest. They were using SCO/Unix to
run their point-of-sale application from their central office. Unfortunately, the Unix
system didn't integrate well with their accounting and inventory control systems and
limited their ability to gather store activity information.
Alto's Solution
Alto was asked to plan and implement a cost
effective, high-performance and scaleable solution to centrally manage a
network that would integrate well with their Windows 32-bit accounting
package. Alto recommended Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition
with Citrix MetaFrame. This combination allowed utilization of the Windows
NT desktop to support greater functionality. Alto then combined The Tile
Shop’s Platinum accounting package with a Microsoft
SQL Server database, and integrated this with a
new Windows NT-based point of sale application. Next Alto tightly integrated
this system with Microsoft Exchange Server for advanced messaging capability. Alto connected
the remote sites to the central application server via
Boundless thin-client terminals connected via a Frame Relay device,
allowing remote invoice and receipt printing at each store.
Business Benefit
Alto helped The Tile Shop maintain their cost
effective central management capability, while adding the functionality,
interoperability, and ease of use associated with Windows NT. Service to
The Tile Shop customers has greatly improved due to real-time inventory
updates. The Tile Shop is able to deploy additional applications over the
network as their needs grow, without extraneous hardware and administration costs. In
the future, thin-client technology will help The Tile Shop utilize products
such as SQL Server to move into new business areas such
as e-commerce. Their new Microsoft NT 4.0 platform will
match their growing company perfectly.
Technologies Used
- Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition
- Citrix MetaFrame
- SQL Server
- Exchange Server
- Crystal Reports
- Visual Basic Enterprise Edition
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Copyright © 1996-2008, Alto Consulting and Training.
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