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"Order-management is the backbone of our business. Waterstone Consulting's system lets us ramp up to 100 order-entry personnel during peak seasons, with almost no training cost." - Vice President

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This company is the leading mail-order distributor of micro-brewed beers, international wines and gourmet coffees. Thundering into the national spotlight in 1993, the company found it needed a special system to handle its enormous growth and seasonal spikes.
Executive Summary

Business Strategy

During off-season, the company runs with 15 order entry personnel fielding an average of 250 orders per day. The months before holidays, however, the company needs 100 people on each of three shifts to handle the 8000 orders per day.

The company chose Waterstone Consulting to develop its mission-critical system. "They covered strategic business issues like 'upselling' during the order-entry process, and constantly changing interstate shipping regulations," said the President.

Technology Strategy

Waterstone Consulting developed a Technology Strategy to support the business needs:

• Support high-volume transaction processing growth for the future
• Nearly eliminate user training
• Adapt quickly to constantly changing regulations
  

Waterstone Consulting chose Microsoft Windows NT Server for the distributor's mission-critical systems. NT Server provides the scaleability and portability needed in the event that the distributor's growth necessitates amove to more powerful hardware.

Microsoft Visual Basic provided the flexibility to respond to industry changes that impact order-entry. By using ODBC with Microsoft SQL Server, Waterstone Consulting has positioned this company to scale-up to any leading database server.

Project Success

Today, the company can "pick someone off the street, sit them down, and in 60 minutes have them taking orders and upselling like a professional," according to the President. "This is critical to closing sales in our business."

During the 1994 Christmas rush, Colorado changed its interstate shipping regulations. Waterstone Consulting put the changes into the system in two days. The company's productivity keeps pace with its growth, thanks to its custom call center solution from Waterstone Consulting.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY