Skateboard and apparel retailer ollies high with scalable IT solution featuring IBM System X servers from thinkASG.
Case Study: High Performance ERP
From humble beginnings as a single store in Chino, California in 1989, Active Ride Shop is a business riding hard and fast. By offering great customer service and superior inventory, Active now operates 20 locations and a booming website.
THE PROBLEM
With growth comes challenge—especially from an IT standpoint.
“Our reputation for great service depends on having what that customer wants in stock, when and where they want it,” explains Todd Melinn, VP of IT and Operations at Active Ride Shop. With hundreds of brands and thousands of products, Active Ride Shop’s inventory requires careful and constant management.
That task was inhibited by IT systems that couldn’t keep up with the retailer’s growth.
“Until recently, we were opening store after store without much regard for the impact on our IT systems,” says Mr. Melinn. The company realized its future depended on a scalable ERP system that would provide visibility into inventory as well as customer information and product trends.
“With limited space and IT resources, Active Ride Shop needed reliable servers that would perform at a higher level, be more energy efficient than their existing DELL equipment and be able to scale easily to their growth demands,” says Tim Nguyen, of thinkASG.
THE SOLUTION
With store openings outpacing its IT infrastructure, Active Ride Shop decided partner with thinkASG and implement a robust, scalable ERP system that would help manage inventory, enhance customer service and provide greater insight into purchasing behavior. But what hardware would deliver that functionality reliably, while supporting and scaling to aggressive growth plans?
“We looked at DELL and HP, but thinkASG architected an IBM solution that addressed all our requirements, and presented it in a clear and compelling way,” says Mr. Melinn. “They really seemed to understand our needs.”
thinkASG implemented an ERP system based on IBM’s X-Architecture® technology with Quad-Core Intel® processors. The solution was powerful, streamlined and scalable. It also featured power-management tools to provide vital information about consumption and temperature.
THE RESULT
Active now has an ERP system powerful enough to handle all its business functions, yet flexible enough to handle future expansion projects.
The new infrastructure, “gives us the flexibility of adding more processors, memory and hardware without affecting our business applications and processes,” explains Mr. Melinn.
He also appreciates, “The ability to do server load balancing on our servers, [which] helps us maximize our server investment and in turn gives us better performance output, with less risk to the business.”
Plus, Active Ride Shop is operating a green, energy-efficient data center that reduces energy consumption and saves money.
PARTNERING FOR THE FUTURE
“thinkASG has been very responsive to our needs and easy to work with,” says Mr. Melinn, “We are pleased with the results… We can scale this solution as we add stores, and not worry about any interruptions to our business.”
