Case Study 1

TGC is a supplier of a wide variety of products to the real estate industry. They were a subsidiary of a large Midwestern privately owned company. When it was announced that they had been sold to a multinational Fortune 10 manufacturing firm, TGC needed a new business information system.

The TGC line of business was different enough from their new parent that they could not use their new parent's systems. The company also had a critical need for new functional capabilities to meet their evolving business operating needs. Their business model was changing significantly due to competitive pressures.

They had gradually been moving away from performing their own production to becoming a subcontracting business. Their new operations involved receiving orders, consolidating the order demand, identifying the appropriate supplier sources, and issuing daily purchasing orders.

They wanted all of these operations set up to run on a fully automated basis with the goal of shipping completed products quickly.

They also needed to completely rework their credit and shipment authorization procedures to fit their new parent's financial control requirements.

To make the situation even more complicated, the new parent's capital budgeting and IT acquisition process was not geared to quick analysis, decision, and demand fulfillment.

The company's IT department (and their outside consulting firm) knew they were in a challenging position.

TGC quickly put together a Request for Proposal (RFP) document outlining their existing system capabilities, new functional requirements, and their very aggressive time frame. This RFP was distributed to a large number of software suppliers. Several potential suppliers responded with functional solutions that appeared as if they would fulfill their needs. However, the time frames and costs proposals for the modifications and enhancements did not fit their schedule or their budget.

We proposed an Application Service Provider (ASP) hosting solution. This did not require any up-front payments or capital expenditures, and could deliver the needed enhancements on schedule and within their budget. Our proposal also showed a significant cost and time advantage for their implementation support needs based on our multimedia training system and the immediate availability of Internet-based support help.

The contract was signed with the committed delivery dates included as part of the contract, and the implementation started immediately.

The company, as well as their new parent's IT management, had a number of concerns about using a hosted ASP system for their corporate-critical data. These concerns focused on the following issues:

Security - was their data secure? Was it being properly administered, backed up, and archived in the event of system failures? Was the transmission of data (including credit card information) safe from being captured and exposed?

LAMAR Software went through a very thorough security review process with both TGC and their parent's IT management. This review included detailed descriptions of the data administration, encoding, and security control processes.

TGC and their new parent's IT department were both satisfied with the high level of security that LAMAR Software provides with ASP hosting.

Dependability - What was the guaranteed performance of the hosted system? Was there a guaranteed uptime level (for example, a 99% uptime level)? What was the data communication response time over the Internet?

The SLA guarantee has never been violated. In fact, there was absolutely no interruption of performance for almost 14 months until LAMAR took the primary servers down on a Sunday for some upgrades.

Internet communication is notoriously variable. It is subject to multiple communication jumps during times of high usage. TGC did not want to implement a more costly solution such as a Virtual Private Network (VPN) which would have provided a more manageable communication environment.

LAMAR's small encapsulated data packet and very thin client architecture provided a workable and acceptable solution for this problem.

The ASP Hosting Total Cost - LAMAR worked with them to determine the approximate historical number of transactions and set a flat monthly fee that was suitable for their budget. This resulted in a significantly lower total annual cost for their IT needs.

After the system had been in live use for about six months, the parent company's IT management wanted to reduce the bandwidth demands on their corporate Internet access. They asked all of their subsidiary operations to reduce their access needs. TGC was dependent on the Internet for their information process, so it was a difficult task for them to reduce their access. Also, they did not have the IT resources or capital budget to set up their own servers in-house.

LAMAR discussed this problem with TGC and came up with a totally new program called "In House Hosting." LAMAR supplied the company with a LAMAR-owned server within their headquarters facility and continued to provide systems administration via the Internet and also via dial-up communications. LAMAR continued to guarantee the same uptime performance and communication response times. There was no capital expense for the company, and the only additional IT operating responsibility they assumed was the performance of daily database backups.

This "In House Hosting" process was so effective, and solved such a level of concern about ASP hosting, that LAMAR has included it as a standard offering. TGC then decided to exercise their right to convert from a monthly fee usage plan to an unlimited use perpetual license. This was done immediately and the company no longer pays monthly license fees for use of the system. They continue to operate on the "In House Hosting" platform, with LAMAR Software providing services as needed.

TGC considers their use of the LAMAR Software ASP hosting service very successful. It filled their functional needs more quickly than any other hardware/ software solution and was significantly less expensive.

The ASP hosting option provided them with the flexibility to accommodate their business transition, and reduced their needs for technical IT staff and expensive infrastructure.