Sun and Lotus Help Canadian Tire Streamline Internal Business Processes

Lotus

Sun and Lotus Help Canadian Tire Streamline Internal Business Processes

Canadian Tire Acceptance (CTAL) manages the retail payment system for Canadian Tire's four million customers, as well as those of Kmart Canada Limited and Peoples Jewelers Corporation. It has grown from a small community-based organization to become a leading edge company with 1,200 employees in three cities. Headquartered in Welland, Ontario, CTAL's Call Centre also provides dispatch assistance to several Roadside Services located across North America.

The ongoing challenge for CTAL is to provide business systems and processes which can support growth and propel the company into the future with the latest technology.

CTAL planned to migrate its communications environment from a mainframe to a client-server environment and was looking for both communications and productivity tools. They wanted to upgrade and improve existing functionality and provide wide-area network based solutions for document handling, messaging and calendaring. "Future intranet access to all desktop computers was also a requirement," says Garth McQueen at CTAL.

CTAL selected Lotus Notes and ran the initial pilot for 100 users on OS/2. Complete implementation for CTAL's 1,000 users would have required eleven servers. However, that was too many servers to support. CTAL needed to rightsize its hardware for two years' growth without any incremental investment. CTAL chose the UNIX-based SPARC/Solaris platform from Sun Microsystems which offered superior scalability.

The final solution includes five Sun SPARCserver 20s with 192 megabytes of RAM, 4 gigabytes of disk space and two dual 70 MHz CPUs. The servers run Sun's Solaris 2.5.1 operating environment and support Lotus Notes for the 1,000 users. BMC's Patrol software running on Sun is used for system and database management.

Good communications have always been part of CTAL's culture. The ability to maintain communications among workgroups was a ey priority to foster high growth. To facilitate communications, Lotus Notes provides workgroups in CTAL's three locations simultaneous access to documents, issues and actions on interdepartmental projects. Sharing and building on ideas among groups speeds up projects and fosters innovation.

Increased productivity was another important goal. Repetitive, manual and paper-based administrative and workflow processes had to be automated, streamlined or eliminated. Finally, management required executive level reporting to monitor project status and business results.

Substantial productivity gains have been realized. In Human Resources, electronic record keeping, vacation tracking and correspondence reduce time and save money. Employee handbooks and procedure manuals updated instantly at no cost. Several hiring procedures have been automated. Job requisitions are distributed and approvals obtained in Notes. Training course outlines, approvals, registrations and billing are also available online.

Many administrative tasks have been streamlined. Business cards can be created by each employee, distributed for approval and forwarded electronically to the supplier, reducing turnover time by ten days. Requests for local area network or telephone services or building maintenance are made in Notes. Employees receive online notification as work progresses, thus increasing their level of satisfaction. The need for hard copy memos and telephone follow up have been significantly reduced.

Management reporting is conducted in a more timely and accurate fashion. Notes running in the Sun client-server environment facilitates desktop access to corporate data warehouses. All data is readily available for reporting and decision making. More timely information means executives are closer to the business.

The Sun/Lotus solution provides cost savings and superior results. Sun scalability ensures that existing hardware will support future growth. The multiprocessor SPARCservers will allow exponential gains when Notes upgrades are implemented. Fewer servers require less ongoing support.

CTAL plans to provide an enterprise solution for collaborative computing to network offices in Montreal and Hamilton. Satellite offices can then deploy the corporate solution and adapt it to meet unique local requirements.

In addition to running Notes applications, CTAL also plans to utilize the Sun systems to provide Internet and intranet access to all desktop computers. CTAL will not require additional products to support this additional functionality.

Access to key suppliers will also be implemented to permit online ordering through a Notes application. Requisitions, approvals, order tracking, invoice receipt and payment will become part of the electronic workflow. Even further productivity gains are expected.

Working together, Sun Microsystems and Lotus Development have enabled Canadian Tire Acceptance to prepare for the future -- today.

(C)1996 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo and Solaris are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. SPARCserver is a trademark of SPARC International, Inc. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon the architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. All other products mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners. Printed in Canada 09/96.

Reprinted with permission from Sun Microsystems, Inc.