Customer Success Story

Online Catalog Division of A Premier Luxury Retailer

• Industry: Retail
• Products: SecureCRT®
• Summary: This online catalog division of a premier luxury retailer uses SecureCRT on its warehouse floor to access its custom warehousing application and get direct input from serial devices such as scanners and scales.

Organization

This premier luxury retailer, long known for its distinctive merchandise and superior service, operates an online catalog division for its various brand names.

Challenge

When it came time to update its warehousing technology, this luxury retailer's print catalog and online division decided replace its dumb terminals equipped with special scanning wands with desktop PCs. With over 500 machines operating in their warehouses, going with PCs offered more flexibility and lower costs than a specialized, proprietary system.

"We like how SecureCRT settings work in our environment…. SecureCRT lets employees change user settings, such as background colors, without affecting the next employee who logs onto that machine." – System Administrator for the online catalog division

In order to make the switch to PCs, this retailer needed to find a Secure Shell terminal emulation client that would work with their custom warehousing software package. Since the machines would be handling inventory control and tracking as well as some sales functions, data security was essential. And with many different users on various shifts operating the PCs on the warehouse floor, the solution needed to work well in a multi-user environment and be easy to maintain and support.

Solution

"VanDyke Software's SecureCRT allowed us to go to PCs," said a lead member of this retailer's information services team. "Our custom warehousing software package encompasses the entire warehouse function – inventory, shipping, and sales recapping – and the PC gives our warehouse employees a lot more functionality. Before, if they needed to find a particular item, they'd go to the terminal, get on to the system, and find a half-line product description, which wasn't very helpful. Now they can access a product number in our warehousing system, go online, get a picture and full description, and have a better idea of what item they are looking for."

SecureCRT is also used to collect input directly from serial devices such as scanners and scales. "We use SecureCRT with handheld scanners to do inventory control and tracking in our warehouse software package. It works great for that," said the lead IT team member. "SecureCRT is installed on the PC and the scanner is hooked up as an external serial device. The same setup is used with our scales for shipping. We then print directly out of SecureCRT to ticket-type printers."

Another reason SecureCRT was selected is its ability to work well in the warehouse environment where many users log on to the same machine. SecureCRT allows one copy of the software to be installed on each machine, and provides each user with their own configuration folder. "We like how SecureCRT settings work in our environment," said The lead IT team member. "The configuration setup makes SecureCRT easier for us to maintain and support."

"We evaluated another product, but it created user profiles all over the place and settings affected everyone," said the lead IT team member. "If the user didn't like the appearance of the screen, they would save their settings, and the software would take their config file and overwrite the config file for all users. The next user who got on would see a screen they didn't recognize. SecureCRT lets employees change user settings, such as background colors, without affecting the next employee who logs onto that machine."

SecureCRT also offered lower overhead, which was an important factor in moving to their PC-based solution. According to The lead IT team member, SecureCRT saved this retailer twenty-five percent over other evaluated products. "We went with SecureCRT because it was lighter and more cost effective. The other system we evaluated did ten times more than we needed and we couldn't justify the cost."

For this retailer's catalog sales division, the switch to SecureCRT for secure connectivity to its warehousing software has provided its employees with a flexible and maintainable solution. "SecureCRT's strongest points are ease of maintenance and independent profiles," said the lead IT team member. "Our users don't need a lot of help with SecureCRT and an individual user's settings don't affect everyone." With fewer support issues related to end user configuration, SecureCRT frees up this retailer's IT resources to focus on other projects and IT issues.

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