Remote Control

Ann Sacks Tile & Stone, a ceramic tile manufacturer and distributor, replaced a cumbersome dialup network with an intranet to improve communications with its remote sales offices and reduce telephone, fax, and courier costs.

Executive Summary

Background
Ann Sacks Tile & Stone (AST&S) is a manufacturer, distributor, and importer of ceramic tile and stone headquartered in Portland, Ore. The company wanted to provide fast, inexpensive, and trouble-free access to its product information and order tracking database for salespeople in eight offices across the United States.

Challenge
AST&S relied on dialup connections to provide its offices access to its order entry database, e-mail, and product information at the corporate headquarters. Because of the complexity of maintaining dozens of dialup accounts, only one shared PC in each remote office provided dialup access that was utilized by all salespeople. The company wanted to put a networked PC on every desktop, giving each sales employee full-time access to corporate data resources while reducing phone, fax, and courier charges.

Solution
The company installed Cisco 1601 routers; linking each office with an intranet Web server and other resources and an order tracking database at its corporate headquarters. It then installed a PC at each sales representative's desk. Today, Frame Relay and digital line connections provide fast communications between the corporate office and sales offices.

Results
AST&S salespeople can now access an intranet Web server, sales tracking database, and company-wide e-mail from their own PCs, rather than having to share one in each office. The company now operates with one seamless network to quickly deliver vital data, cutting phone costs in half and reducing courier costs by 75 percent. Employees are also more productive because they can answer their customers' product availability and order status questions much more quickly.

The Background

Founded in 1981, Ann Sacks Tile & Stone (AST&S) is a maker, importer, and distributor of premium tile, natural stone, and terra cotta for architectural uses. Operating from its corporate headquarters in Portland, the firm has70 employees with 35 in sales offices in Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Kohler, Wis. The company plans to add new sales offices in Dallas and Denver by the end of 1998. In addition to its direct sales efforts, AST&S uses more than 30 dealers throughout the country to handle its products.

The Challenge

AST&S wanted to make its corporate sales tracking database, company-wide e-mail, product information, and other resources available to its sales offices with a fast, seamless, and reliable network. By eliminating delays in delivering e-mail, order status information, product information, product photos, and other data, the company could improve employee productivity and customer service, increase sales, and reduce communications costs.

Each sales office had a single PC that provided dialup access to the network at the corporate office. As many as half a dozen users at each office had to take turns using the shared PC, and e-mail delivery speed depended on the frequency of dialups. In addition, headquarters employees relied heavily on fax machines or daily overnight messengers for their communication needs, so salespeople couldn't always answer customer questions immediately.

The Solution

AST&S network analyst Robert Anderson installed Ethernet networks tied to Cisco 1601 routers in each sales office and at the corporate headquarters. He then set up an intranet Web server. Each out-of-state sales office is linked via a 56-Kb Frame Relay connection to the router at headquarters. The Portland showroom has a direct 56-Kb digital line connection and the router at headquarters has a fractional T-1 (256-Kb) data connection.

Anderson chose Cisco products because the routers were flexible enough to handle IPX® switch traffic from the company's Novell networks, and could easily be reconfigured to handle TCP/IP traffic in the future. The routers were also easy to install.

"We made a couple of technical support calls about setting up the routers for our flavor of IPX," says Anderson, "but since then, we haven't wasted any time worrying about them."

The routers also proved easy to install by less technical users at the remote sales offices. "We preprogram a router here and send it out," he says. "The remote office just plugs it in, and away they go."

The Results

The sales office networks have allowed AST&S to provide a networked desktop PC for every employee at its sales offices. The secure intranet gives every employee instant, full-time access to vital sales and corporate information, as well as company-wide e-mail, via an intranet Web site. Rather than using expensive dialup connections, sharing a terminal, and relying on daily overnight messenger packages from headquarters, the sales office employees can now use a reliable network connection from their own desktops.

"Before, we were sending brochures, paperwork, and reports in daily overnight packages between offices," says Anderson. "Now, a lot of that information and product literature is available on the intranet Web site." Employees can also access a separate sales order database via the network, while a server at headquarters sends sales reports out to laser printers at each office overnight so employees have them by the next morning.

In the future, AST&S plans to integrate its sales order tracking system into the Web site, and to set up a firewall and external Web server that will provide the same product and order information for the company's dealers. "All of our contacts with dealers are currently through telephone and the mail," says Anderson. "If they need to find out anything in real time over the phone, it's only available between eight and five o'clock Monday through Friday. With an extranet, they'll have twenty-four- hour access to online pricing and product information."

The system has been in place since March, 1996. In that one year, the company has saved roughly $27,000 in overnight delivery, which is 50 percent more than the Cisco routers cost. In addition, the company has replaced its dialup costs with less expensive Frame Relay connections. "Each office typically ran up a thousand-dollar modem bill every month," says Anderson, "and one was close to two thousand a month because it had six users accessing the one PC several times a day." Overall, eliminating modem access charges saves the company an additional $24,000 per year.

By providing the flexibility, performance, and reliability to link eight remote offices with its corporate network and intranet Web server, Cisco routers have streamlined the sales information system for ASTS. Offices across the United States are now full partners in the corporate information system, and an extranet will soon provide real-time information to the company's dealers. "It's a big leap from where we were," Anderson says.