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Sally Hair and Beauty Supplies
is a very successful global company, originating
in the USA. Sally Hair and Beauty Supplies 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 Hair and Beauty Supplies 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 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 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 whilst also offering additional
functionality.
Blue Fax is a native, turnkey fax solution for the
IBM System i that supports sending, receiving and
printing of fax documents. It enables Sally to send
faxes directly from the IBM System i 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
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 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 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 Beauty Company, 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
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