IT teams often are inundated with day-to-day tasks and obligations that continue to increase, especially as new POS technologies are added and older systems require updates and maintenance.
Redner’s Warehouse Markets improved IT productivity and task management by implementing the KACE K1000 Management Appliance, PC and device inventory management and software installation solution, and K2000 Deployment Appliance, a fully-integrated disk imaging and system repair and recovery solution, both from Dell. Overall, the retailer experienced a 512% ROI as a result of these solutions.
Redner’s Warehouse Markets currently operates 42 grocery stores, 14 Quick Shoppe convenient stores and 600 POS terminals across both segments. Since adopting the KACE solutions, the retailer has minimized upfront deployment costs by 200%. Moreover, as the brand continues to grow, the KACE technology will help ensure registers remain in service, Nick Hidalgo, Director of IT for Redner’s Warehouse Markets, told Retail TouchPoints.
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“We’re now able to deploy systems quicker and get registers back in service two or three hours faster than with our manual processes,” Hidalgo said. “As we open new locations, one team member ― not three or four ― now can provision an entire store. This improvement makes us feel lean and mean, and is definitely helpful in our expansion.”
The greatest benefit of KACE K1000, Hidalgo reported, is the ability to address patch management and program updates on desktops and POS terminals. Rather than handle operating system updates manually, Redner’s Markets now has the flexibility to schedule and push out patching automatically and consistently, based on PC, manufacturing type, application or critical OS update.
The previous process required the Redner’s IT team to manually connect to each POS terminal to install, reboot, run patching and ensure all changes were approved. For a 15-lane store, what once took IT several days to complete now can be done in five minutes. The IT team also has improved support at the back end, from the email system to time clocks and voice over Internet Protocol phones. As it oversees more than 500 computers in the retailer’s network, IT now is addressing and controlling service requests in a timelier manner.
Redner’s Markets uses the K1000 Appliance to manage software and hardware inventory, completely eliminating the need for time-consuming help desk processes. Previously, if an associate contacted the Redner’s Warehouse IT department via laptop to address a problem, a team member would have to ask the user a series of questions to gain access to the system before determining the issue and deciding on an actionable solution. Now, a team member’s desktop or mobile PC can be found in the inventory system via the end node or user’s name, allowing IT to determine the device location and IP address, and connect immediately.
The KACE K2000 Appliance helps capture images of Redner’s Markets POS software, allowing the IT team to restore images of information if needed. Additionally, the solution allows more seamless site management and remote recovery of corrupted systems.
Initially, Hidalgo anticipated using KACE as a help desk solution, he explained. However, leveraging the Appliances for physical inventory and audit, software distribution, configuration management, patch management and systems imaging, IT has experienced improved productivity as well as increased satisfaction among employees.
“Our lives have become been much simpler since implementing the Dell KACE Appliances to handle our systems management tasks,” Hidalgo said. “Previously we had no form of system management in place. The tools have helped us in many ways, resulting in a huge time savings.”
