About Save Mart Supermarkets
Save Mart Supermarkets (Save Mart) is a privately held food chain headquartered in Modesto, California. Founded in 1952, Save Mart operates more than 240 stores in Northern and Central California and Northern Nevada under the Save Mart, S-Mart Foods, Lucky and FoodMaxx banners.
Challenge
"Enhancing our IT systems enables the business to be successful in each of its charters," said James Sims, chief information officer for Save Mart Supermarkets. "Our role is to optimize performance while containing operating costs. Gaining efficiencies in endpoint and server management is key to this goal."
In just two years, Save Mart has doubled in size. The company's 12 system administrators now manage 1,200 desktops, 1,000 servers and 2,500 POS lanes across multiple operating systems and more than a dozen offices. Naturally, it became difficult to efficiently manage its IT assets. When system issues arose at remote locations, technicians often had to spend all day traveling to the site. Updating the company's handheld devices used at its distribution and storage facilities was also laborious. "If our handhelds go down, it delays order processing, causing labor costs to skyrocket," said Sims.
Save Mart also needed to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements such as PCI and HIPAA. "We needed to lock down USB ports without limiting user functionality," said Sims.
Novell Solution
After evaluating numerous endpoint and server management solutions, Save Mart selected Novell ZENworks® Configuration Management. "We looked at several tools like IBM Director but found that Novell ZENworks Configuration Management offered the best scalability and manageability," said Paul Craig, director of IT Data Services for Save Mart Supermarkets. "We also get a bigger bang for our buck since the Novell solution works across our mixed platform environment."
"Novell ZENworks Configuration Management is profoundly more cost-effective than other solutions," said Sims. "We had relied on discrete modules to manage our environment, such as RSM for our NCR lanes and WSUS for our Windows Servers, which was inefficient. Novell ZENworks Configuration Management allows us to manage multiple applications and operating systems across a wide range of devices."
Save Mart uses Novell ZENworks Configuration Management to distribute applications, patches and operating system updates for servers and soon, its POS lanes; streamline the on-boarding process for new PCs; and re-image machines when systems failures occur.
The company has found the solution especially useful for troubleshooting system issues. "Previously, troubleshooting system problems consumed a good deal of second- and third-level support time," said Alvaro Espinoza, senior director of IT Operations for Save Mart Supermarkets. "Today we can deliver value faster by using the remote control functionality in Novell ZENworks Configuration Management, which allows our support personnel to take over a user's machine and swiftly resolve the issue. This results in a huge improvement in first call resolution."
In addition, Save Mart is deploying Novell ZENworks Asset Management to ensure software compliance and identify opportunities to reclaim underutilized software licenses. "We have so much equipment that we've gained through acquisitions," said Craig. "With Novell ZENworks Asset Management we'll have an opportunity to not just see what inventory users have but whether they're actually utilizing it."
Save Mart is also deploying Novell ZENworks Endpoint Security Management to protect sensitive customer data. "We wanted to prevent employees from downloading unauthorized information to a thumb drive, yet still enable them to use authorized endpoint devices," said Sims. "Novell ZENworks Endpoint Security Management allows us to do just that."
Results
By leveraging Novell ZENworks Configuration Management, Save Mart has improved productivity and significantly reduced IT costs. "The more we can streamline our IT processes and lower our overhead costs, the better value we can offer to our retail customers," said Sims. "In fact, our IT department is now running at half the cost, as a percentage of revenue, of many of our retail peers. Employing high value solutions like Novell ZENworks Configuration Management is one key way we achieve this."
Save Mart IT staff and users have been very pleased with the solution. "Novell ZENworks Configuration Management allows us to distribute new applications, updates and patches with ease," said Sims. "In addition, we've cut desktop provisioning from a week to just one day. Our users benefit from more frequent application updates and proactive services to keep their systems running smoothly."
"Novell has been a fabulous partner to work with," said Sims. "They brought outstanding people to the table to help us extract the full value of this solution."