As a manufacturer and distributor of thousands of parts for light and heavy-duty trucks, Dayton Parts primary focus is on their customers. They know that sending personalized price sheets to their valued customers on a regular basis is good business. This detailed personal attention continues to produce new and loyal customers. As the customer base grew, the amount of effort to create and distribute the personalized price sheets began to affect productivity. Dayton Parts realized they needed to automate their file transfer process, so they started the search for an application that would streamline the data distribution process.
Steering in a New Direction - Automating File Transfers
IBM i (iSeries) servers handle inventory and processing at Dayton Parts. However, converting the inventory lists and pricing information from DB2 into the required Excel spreadsheets is not a normal server function. Instead, staff manually extracted the data and pasted it into email, which required close to 100 hours from several staff members over a 6-day period.
Dayton Parts knew they had to improve the efficiency and speed of this critical process. In order to reduce staff time, they would need full automation of the data translation from DB2 to Excel and the distribution of the price sheets via email. Marketing and IT worked together to find a solution that would accomplish these goals. There were only a handful of solutions on the market that would install natively to IBM i (iSeries) servers. Most were complicated to use or didn?t support the automation Dayton Parts required. Dayton Parts was excited to evaluate a browser-based, automated file transfer solution ? GoAnywhere Director from Linoma Software.
A Smooth Ride - SQL Query and XML Translation
Dayton Parts had seen a demonstration using the SQL query options and the data mapping options inside GoAnywhere Director, but were interested to see if it would work in their unique environment. The implementation went smoothly and through the GoAnywhere Director browser-interface, a process was developed that queried the database, performed the calculations, created the Excel file and attached one or more price sheets per email.
?Now with GoAnywhere Director the system can run the complete automated file transfer process in just 3 hours, versus 6 days!? exclaimed Rusty Foust ? Project Manager at Dayton Parts. ?We can also run a single ad-hoc customized price sheet at any time and it only takes a minute.?
The time savings alone was instant gratification for Dayton Parts. The ease of use and functionality within Linoma?s solution would more than meet their needs. GoAnywhere Director was a great fit as it ran natively on the IBM i, easily communicated with other platforms, required little user interaction, and performed very efficiently. Another key factor in their decision was the helpful support staff at Linoma Software who was able to quickly answer questions and provide assistance when needed.
Marketing Success
Distributing personalized price sheets to their customers is critical to Dayton Parts marketing strategy and overall success in the competitive after-market for undercarriage parts for light and heavy-duty trucks. Dayton Parts has a new advantage with the powerful automated processing and file transfers performed by GoAnywhere Director.
Looking back on the project that started earlier this year, Rusty Foust concludes, ?GoAnywhere Director is intuitive, well documented, extremely versatile and well supported. It?s a solid solution that dramatically improved and enhanced a critical process for us. It?s hard to believe how we used to send out the personalized price sheets when GoAnywhere Director makes it look so simple.?
About Dayton Parts, LLC
Dayton Parts employs nearly 200 men and women in its manufacturing, sales and distribution operations located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Alberta, Canada. Their manufacturing plant features state-of-the-art taper spring manufacturing equipment that is capable of producing an infinite number of leaf spring designs; including the technically advanced high-stress leaf springs. Dayton Parts complete product offering of brake, spring, steering and suspension product lines are unrivaled in content, quality and coverage. They supply the most complete, single-source product offering available to the independent after-market for undercarriage parts.
About Linoma Software
Linoma Software provides innovative technologies for protecting sensitive data and automating data movement. With a diverse install base of over 3,000 customers around the world, Linoma Software provides enterprise-class managed file transfer and data encryption solutions to corporations, nonprofit organizations and government entities. With its dedication to research, development and superior customer service, Linoma Software is a recognized leader in software development.
About GoAnywhere Director
GoAnywhere Director streamlines and manages data movement through an innovative centralized approach. It allows your organization to connect to almost any system (internal or external) and securely exchange data using standard protocols including FTP, SFTP (SSH), SCP, FTPS (SSL/TLS), HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, POP3, IMAP and AS2. GoAnywhere Director also supports OpenPGP and ZIP with AES encryption for securing sensitive documents.
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