Customer Profile
Levy Home Entertainment is recognized as an innovator with unmatched ability to service mass merchants, warehouse clubs and drug/grocery accounts. With over $600 million in annual sales, Levy provides books and services surrounding books to BJ's Warehouse Clubs, Kmart, Meijer, Rite Aid, Shopko, Stop and Shop, Target, Toys “R” Us, Walmart and others. Additionally, LHE supplies books and warehousing services for Wholesaler Source Interlinks customers including Albertsons, Kroger, Walgreens, Safeway and many others. Levy offers an array of supply chain services for books, such as warehousing, picking and shipping to complex planograming of each retailers' consumer book offering and full in store merchandising services.
Business Requisites
Levy approached Pearl Technology’s development team to enhance and rewrite their Time Reporting System (TRS) web portal, reducing dependency and increasing flexibility. This customized portal is used by all employees to record and track time spent on specific projects. Levy wanted to reduce mailing costs and record more detailed key performance indicators. Levy was in need of a more automated approach with a database that was fully relational, easy to access and enhance, and is a stable platform for building additional business processes.
The Pearl Technology Solution
Pearl has a staff of Microsoft-certified DBAs (MCITP), an IEEE (CSDP) certified soft-ware professional, and multiple Microsoft certified software professionals (MCPD). This project did not lend itself to a simple one-man implementation team, but rather a small, well-crafted team that could quickly learn the business requirements, understand the business use cases, and architect a technical solution to meet the needs of the client. Pearl assisted throughout the entire software development lifecycle — from initial requirements gathering, building the system definition, designing the system architecture, creation of the database schema, and implementation of the system using best practices for code security and maintainability. The solution was to build a multi-tier web application with scalability up to 2,000 users while also integrating the system with Microsoft CRM, iSeries, & SQL Database data stores.
Benefits to Client
Greater visibility into business processes allows Levy to make better-informed business decisions. The TRS platform enables quicker user navigation and data entry, as well as better administration tooling. Bulk mailings have been reduced and document sharing is simpler and faster using the new document repository. The new system allows custom creation of client surveys, along with an easier process for management and distribution of results. User messaging capabilities enable direct communication through the portal between representatives and managers. Stronger time entry rules prevent users from abusing the system’s robust functionality.
Client Reaction
"Throughout the past couple months, I have had the pleasure of working with Pearl Technology. The Pearl team built our new Time Reporting Website that is used by our 2,000+ field employees. The scope for this project was very exten-sive and of course there were several enhancement requests along the way. Not only are they friendly and helpful to my team, but they are extremely knowledgeable, reliable, and professional. I'm very impressed on the short turnaround on projects or enhancements that are given to this team, and they are also very patient when we throw some curve balls their way. Working with Pearl has been a great experience and I plan to use them as our consultant in the future."
— Field Service Operations Manager, Levy Home Entertainment