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Mission: Provide the most cost effective, reliable, recoverable and user-friendly environment for Gingiss Formalwear and it’s partners and provide guidance and solutions to make the company number one in business practices and to enable it to be the leader in our market. Current State: Back office - Gingiss and Gary’s back office software systems are old and manually intensive for both the user community and the I.T. support team. They are not integrated and to some degree there is duality between the systems because of an incomplete merger between the two companies. Information is not easily accessible and information is inconsistent. The merchandise management systems at both Gary’s and Gingiss are barely functional and intensely manual. The ABRA Payroll and Human Resource System is a good application module but the users need training to make better use of it’s functions. ABRA can handle many more thousands of employees for years to come. Incidentally, it is made by the same software house as our ERP system (MAS500) which was purchased in 2002 but not installed. Service Centers - My first assignment when I arrived in June of 2003 was to install the Addison plant system in our Van Nuys plant. That decision had been made prior to my arrival and the Van Nuys team had been given a retention bonus and an end-date of September 30th 2003. Although standardization was a good idea, it would not have worked because the Addison plant system did not have the capacity to service the Van Nuys business so I killed the project. Before the company bankruptcy I was reviewing alternatives to the plant systems. One option I briefly considered was to purchase another IBM AS/400 and install the Van Nuys system in Addison but that was not practical for several reasons; The Van Nuys plant system is another undocumented homegrown mess with it’s own problems and we could not abandon the other three company-owned and eighteen franchisee plants which also had the Addison system. In addition, the Addison system was written in an obscure language (Clipper) and it is based on a very old version of Dbase (DB2). During the tail-end of the busy season the Addison plant manager ran through the building at least seven times a week ordering everyone to get off the system while the database indexes needed to be rebuilt. We have addressed that problem by dedicating a server to the plant system and increasing the CPU, adding memory and increasing the speed of the disk drives. We have also added disk mirroring for better disaster recovery purposes. Before the bankruptcy I was working with our plant personnel and our franchisees to design a Microsoft SQL Server based version of the plant system for all twenty-three locations. Store Systems – Our POS (Point-Of-Sale) systems are a mix of Parcom, two similar versions of FormalLink and DOS (predecessor to FormalLink). Parcom was Gary’s off-the-shelf POS system and it was reduced to a shell of it’s capability when the software provider went out of business and took the source code with it. DOS was Gingiss’ first POS system and FormalLink is it’s Windows based successor. Although FormalLink is the best application set throughout the Gingiss system, it has non-traditional retail transaction files and the payroll piece is written in the old Clipper language. We are currently addressing some major problems with the retail side of merchandising and POS. There is a retail item master for Gingiss and another one for Gary’s. There is no function to update the item master for the Gary’s stores and retail sales inventory tracking and replenishment is guesswork. Within the next 30 days there will be one item master in all stores and it will be updated with adds/changes and deletes on a nightly basis. The DOS stores will still have problems tracking retail sales until we upgrade them to FormalLink. The installation of FormalLink is one big step in our consolidation of all the payroll functions in Addison. We still need to acquire the Van Nuys plant time clock management and the data entry of the Stockton and southern California drivers. Networks - Until recently, Addison’s network was a mix of Novell and Windows 2000. We have been migrating all of our systems to Windows 2000 but we still emulate Novell for the plant system. Addison does not have it’s own mail server. Gingiss email is using the Microsoft Outlook client hosted by an inconsistent third-party ISP. Our plan is to install a mail server in Addison which will host Gingiss.com and garystuxshops.com. The Van Nuys network is using Windows NT and we need to upgrade at least one server to Windows 2000 so we can manage the entire network from Addison and view both locations as one location. Van Nuys, having been the original corporate offices for Gingiss and Gary’s, has an older version (5) of Microsoft Exchange which hosts garystuxshops.com. Exchange shares the file server with the rest of the network-based applications. The Short-Term Plan: Complete the Parcom POS conversion to FormalLink. Upgrade the remaining 22 DOS stores (Midwest) to FormalLink. Complete the store-renumbering project to conform to the After Hours numbering scheme. Continue with the item master consolidation project so that all stores will have the same item master updated nightly. Continue with the merchandise management project that will greatly improve our retail management of inventory and ordering. The merchandise management project should be complete before the end of February. Select and install a centrally managed time clock system, which will fix some problems in Addison and allow us to complete the payroll consolidation of Van Nuys payroll processing to Addison. Perform network upgrades that will increase our disaster recovery capabilities and allow us to perform remote system management. Make process improvements to the plant systems within the next 45 days. The Mid-Term Plan: Install the MAS500 ERP system that was purchased in 2002 to replace the aging and ineffective modules currently used in Addison and Van Nuys. The modules include the General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Purchasing, Fixed Assets, Cash Management and an Executive Dashboard. We also need to include the Inventory module for retail inventory management for the plants and the stores. This installation will eliminate all the homegrown and unconnected modules from both Van Nuys and Addison. It will lower the number of employees (or allow us to make better use of their skills) and it will greatly increase our measurement tools. We will also have A/P automatch and the ABRA payroll system will interface to our General Ledger. Except for the plant system, the installation of MAS500 will eliminate all of the homegrown modules so we can concentrate on the data instead of application support. Personnel: The Information Technology team consists of 11 people between Addison and Van Nuys. Ray Costello – VP/CIO of Gingiss Formalwear Project Summaries: Convert 38 Stores to FormalLink - $27,885 The Parcom POS (Point-Of-Sale) systems are intensely manual, prone to error and do not provide the data capture that is needed to run an efficient store. All of the Parcom stores are on the west coast with three in Nevada and the rest in California. Most of the hardware will come from store closings but there will be an additional cost of 9k for new credit card services and additional printers that did not exist in the closed Sears stores. Five DOS stores are added to the conversion process due to their proximity to the Parcom stores. Convert 22 DOS Stores to FormalLink – $28,000 There are significant differences between DOS and FormalLink store operations and the old DOS store equipment has been failing at a steady rate. Five of the DOS stores will be converted with the previous Parcom conversion because of their proximity to the Parcom stores. The remaining DOS stores are in Massachusetts (4), Indiana (1), Wisconsin (5) and the greater Chicago land area (11). One other reason to upgrade the DOS stores is to get current with licensing and remove Novell as the operating system. Convert Back Office Systems to The MAS500 ERP System - $95,000 The current back office systems need updating and integration to replace the current home-grown, inefficient and data-deficient manual systems . This includes G/L, A/R, A/P, Fixed Assets, Inventory, Cash Management, Purchasing and a Data Warehouse. The software has already been purchased but an additional 16K is required to cover the annual maintenance. 95K covers consulting, conversion costs and the purchase of additional modules. Install Mail Server - $30,000 We have reviewed some cost effective email alternatives to Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes and the selection is between Imail and Mdaemon. Both systems are easy to configure and support. Payroll Consolidation – $11,000 Our payroll is split between the Van Nuys and the Addison office primarily due to the Parcom systems installed in the west coast stores. With the conversion of FormalLink we will be able to process the entire payroll centrally. The Van Nuys plant needs a new time clock system to replace the old ADP system. Additionally, we would like to acquire timecards that have the employee numbers bar-coded on a wearable PIN. This feature would be essential for quality control. Other Projects: Merchandising Consolidation – Integrating Gary’s and Gingiss retail inventory (Work in Process). This project will centralize merchandising functions into the Addison office, eliminating the AS/400 applications. Standardize FormalLink POS System – The FormalLink system has a ten-digit SKU for the Gary’s stores and a six-digit SKU for Gingiss. In order to standardize on one item master the FormalLink system must have a single standard, which is a ten-digit sku. (Work in Process). Disaster Recovery – $6,000 All plants and offices need disaster recovery procedures including off-site storage of tape rotations. Also, the networks are not configured for redundancy in the loss of the main server. Training – $10,000 The user community needs training in desktop applications and the new ERP software to increase their knowledge and efficiency. |
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