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Sally Salon Services Ltd is a very successful global
company, originating in the USA. Sally Salon
Services Ltd now has branches across the US,
Europe and Japan. As a major supplier for the
beauty industry communications are vitally
important across all three continents.
Every day Sally Salon Services Ltd receives a
continuous stream of communications ranging from
orders & remittances to general faxes and email.
Depending upon the communication type there are a
number of different locations each document may
need to be forwarded to.
In order to provide a quick and efficient service for
their clients it is necessary for Sally to ensure that the
documentation is processed quickly and effectively
by the correct department.
Sally had an IBM System i (AS400) running Fax400
to facilitate the distribution of fax documents. The
termination of support for the Fax400 product
prompted Sally to look into other solutions. Although
they found many alternatives the majority they
investigated would require additional hardware. This
would be costly not only in terms of the hardware but
also in the time to deployment and training of the users.
SpaceTec, a leading supplier of IBM System i
(AS400) products and service was brought in to
discuss Sallys' requirements. SpaceTec are the UK's
only distributor of the Blue Series solutions and as
such have many customers with similar issues to
Sally. SpaceTec recommended the Blue Fax and Blue
Mail applications.
These solutions would enable Sally to continue
utilising the IBM System i (AS400) whilst also
offering additional functionality.
Blue Fax is a native, turnkey fax solution for the IBM
System i (AS400) that supports sending, receiving
and printing of fax documents. It enables Sally to send
faxes directly from the IBM System i (AS400) spool
file or from any word processing software on any
attached PC. Sally is able to set up Blue Fax so that it
will automatically distribute faxes to any number of
predetermined locations. This together with Blue
Mail a similar application for email ensures that Sally
is able to communicate all requests quickly to the
correct departments or locations.
Blue Mail works by distributing SCS or AFP prints
as email. The image is sent as a PDF or TIFF
attachment. The graphics remain exactly the same
regardless of the output format. Sally can work with
all types of spool data and send documents such as
invoice or purchase orders as e-mail.
Sally were able to deploy the Blue Series applications
within one day with no disruption to their end users.
Colin Harris MIS project Manager for Sally said "The
Blue Fax has proved to be a stable and reliable
solution. Monitoring of the faxes is fairly intuitive
and as most functionality is automatic the users find
they need to interface with the system very little. It is
now much simpler to set up new applications. For
example when we set up the system to fax Remittance
Advices, the whole task only took a few hours at the
most. The Blue Mail module has proved
indispensable as we have been able to use it as a back
up system when communications with the warehouse
system were lost. It was easy to set up Blue Mail to
email all orders and critical reports to an alternative
Email address allowing business to continue as
usual."
Sometime after installing the Blue Series solutions Sally were up against another problem. They were
utilising a print application to convert IPDS output to PCL5. Although the application was working fine and
producing the required results the problem arose when Sally realised their need for more licenses. Purchasing
the extra licenses was to prove very costly. Sally is expanding at a very quick rate and they could see that the
ongoing cost of new licenses could mount up very quickly. Due to the success of the Blue Series application
Sally turned to SpaceTec once again to discuss alternative print management solutions. SpaceTec made a
recommendation to switch their existing products to Interform400. Interform400 which is licensed per IBM
System i (AS400) as opposed to per user, would offer the same results as their current product together with
additional benefits. This would allow Sally to expand without the worry of continuously buying extra licenses.
InterForm400 handles the entire print workflow of Sally's IBM System i (AS400) without any requirement
for re-programming their print applications. Forms are automatically selected based on print data or spool
attributes, and distributed to any PCL5 compatible printer in their network. Interform400 also offers the ability
to create the documents in PDF format and includes a zip feature so these documents can be emailed to
external users. Another module used by Sally is the ZPL handler allowing the printing of bar codes on their
desktop Zebra Printers. This module has saved Sally money and time as the new printers are more reliable
and have a lower cost of ownership.
Patrick Race of SpaceTec said "The Blue Series and InterForm400 Products are both easy to deploy and
configure, we find that most companies require little or no training. As both products are modular, companies
can install just the components necessary with the knowledge that they can make additions in the future. Sally
are fairly typical in their approach to purchasing applications for the IBM System i (AS400) most of our
customers start with a base module and find at a later date they have a need for additional tools"
About Sally
Sally Salon Services Ltd Inc. is the world's largest distributor of professional beauty supplies. The company
has 3,000 stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Mexico and Japan. For further
information, visit www.sallybeauty.com or call 1-800- ASK-SALLY for store location information
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