POS and Wide Area Networking Plus

"When The Ideal Computer Group accepted the challenge of supplying software for Totem Building Supplies Ltd. we had never been involved in a project of this magnitude," says Keith Nummela, founder and president of Ideal. "The rapid growth required to keep pace with our ongoing business while stretching to complete this large project for Totem was difficult," he continues, "but, it all worked out for the best. Totem became our greatest client ever and the project brought Ideal and BASIS International together."

The Ideal Computer Group, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, started the Totem project as an eight-person company and grew to twenty people within a year. Such rapid growth doesn't come without pain, but according to Nummela, "no pain, no gain." Ideal now has a support office in Calgary and several more clients in Alberta. In addition, they recently contracted with Multi-User Business Systems Inc. to be their distributor for Ontario.

"Gearing up for this project required a lot of commitment and adjusting," says Nummela. "We kept an average of three programmers in Totem's Calgary office for nearly three years to satisfy their requirements, including my brother Wayne, who is our Software Manager." Adding to this challenge were two other sales of IdealWare and six sales of IdeaLaw at about the same time as Totem.

Totem Building Supplies Ltd. is a growing, independent operator of retail home improvement centers in Alberta, Canada. Based in Calgary, they operate nine retail stores, an 80,000 square foot warehouse, two contract sales offices, and a central administrative office. Sales for 1994 were Can$101 million, up 14% from 1993 and nearly triple the 1987 figure. Approximately 80% of sales are to do-it-yourself customers with the balance from professional accounts. Roughly 85% of sales are cash with the balance on accounts receivable.

Totem was virtually uncomputerized in 1990 when they chose to purchase IdealWare. By January 1, 1991, they were running live on point-of-sale (POS) at all their stores. By the summer of '91, they were on full inventory control at all of their sites. This was no small feat considering that the project didn't really get rolling until mid-1990.

What made the Totem project even more challenging was that Totem was a very creative company with money to back up its creativity. Although Ideal didn't realize it at the time, their quotation was substantially below Totem's second choice vendor, and Totem was fully prepared to spend this extra money on having Ideal rewrite the software to do everything they wanted.

This was one of those rare projects where an incredible synergy existed between the programming team and the client's people, from the owner to the cashiers. Totem's management team included people who not only knew their own business extremely well, but also proved to have a natural aptitude for systems design and project management. This allowed Ideal's programmers to focus primarily on programming and leave much of the implementation and training to Totem's management. The synergy held for and extended time and some truly beautiful software was created as a result.

The following points highlight the results of the Ideal/Totem synergy:

Extremely fast sales processing is provided at both the sales counter and the cash till. This results from a vast amount of thought and analysis and incorporates many ideas and techniques, large and small. A few are listed below:
- Color is used extensively throughout the system. For example, overdue customer balances show up in red whereas balances within limits display in green. While many people believe that color is a fancy frill, Ideal and Totem both believe the intelligent use of color makes software easier to work with and therefore faster to operate. The ability of BBx to manipulate windows using mnemonics was of particular benefit in programming the displays.
- Sophisticated inquiries are available throughout the system. For example, products can be searched for by selecting items from extended levels of groups and subgroups, or by a simple word search. The BASIS file system and the BBx implementation of 'previous key' and 'next key' function contributed significantly to this feature.
- Online credit card authorizations average just six seconds between swiping and authorization. In addition to speeding up sales processing time, the general ledger is always in balance to the penny with the bank. Online debit card processing is in the works and scheduled for completion this summer.
Highly sophisticated packaged product sales processing is provided. Totem is very strong in prefabricated kits, offering packages for fencing, decks, garages, picnic tables, workbenches, garden sheds, and doghouses. IdealWare's packaged product sales processing, as designed around Totem's requirements, is far more sophisticated than the run-of-the-mill bill of materials logic offered with most software packages.
- For example: prices on individual items in a package are prorated according to the overall discount offered on the package. Where applicable, the salesperson must select one of several choices from option lines before the order can be accepted. Option lines are displayed in red until an option has been chosen, then change to green. A package usage sheet that shows products sorted in logical groupings, from the customer's perspective, prints out as a supplement to the sales order.
Purchase orders for special order items can be created right from within the counter sales program. When the special order item is received, the cost is automatically updated to the associated sales order.
Counter sales orders have a bar code of the order number printed on them. This order number is read by a scanner at the cash till when the customer pays for the order.
Facilities are provided at each cash till for two cash drawers, a display bar, a weight scale, a table top scanner, a handheld scanner, a card reader, and a debit card unit.
Extremely sophisticated inter-site/system integration is included. The ability of BBx to handle pipes played a significant role in setting up communication links.

Each of Totem's nine stores, plus their warehouse and central office, have a separate, Intel-based 486 computer running SCO UNIX. The central office has about forty terminals, the warehouse about ten and each store about twenty (four of which are cash terminals). Each store and the warehouse have a single, inexpensive, dial-up modem line and the central office has four. Data is transferred between the systems using the UNIX operating system's uucp protocol and Ideal's intelligently designed inter-site integration logic, which incorporates the following:

All product, customer and supplier master information is maintained at the central office, as well as password security data. Changes to these files, along with chain-wide inventory levels and customer balances, are automatically transmitted to all locations every night.
Daily sales batches, and inventory receiving and adjustment batches are automatically transmitted to the central office system each evening from the stores and the warehouse and are reupdated there. Accounts Receivable detail and General Ledger data are updated only at the central office, not at the stores or warehouse. A special program called The Sequencer makes sure that all batches are updated at the central office in exactly the same order as they were updated at the stores or the warehouse to ensure that the inventory audit trail is identical.
Weekly order reports are created and transmitted electronically from each store to the warehouse where they are merged into the warehouse order entry system.

Says Nummela, "We started this project using Thoroughbred Business Basic, which was our standard at the time. But early in 1994, at great expense to both ourselves and to our clients including Totem, we changed our standard to BASIS International's Business BASIC language, BBx. Our primary reasons for making this change were product stability and the availability of features that we and our clients desired."

"BBx utilities have more features, are better written, and are more stable," says Ideal programmer Darryl Krasman. He also claims the BASIS library merge, library update, and program search/replace utilities allow greater control of standard program functions and are far faster than Thoroughbred's. "It all adds up to higher programmer productivity," says Krasman.

Ideal president Nummela adds, "It was also important that BASIS had its own 4GL product, TAOS: The BBx Developer's Workbench. After careful analysis we determined TAOS to be quite competitive with Thoroughbred's 4GL offering. It was a big change for us but we're very happy we made it."

The Totem project was winding to a close in the summer of 1993 when Totem decided to make some significant changes to its business that extended the project into the spring of 1994. Totem decided to expand the contractor aspect of its business and create two new contractor sales divisions, one in Calgary and one in Edmonton. In addition, they designated one of their four Calgary stores and one of the three Edmonton stores as centralized delivery locations for all contractor sales made in these cities. Among other factors, these designations required that Ideal add the following enhancements to IdealWare:

When a different delivery store is specified from the one where a sale is entered, the sales order is automatically transmitted via the UNIX uucp protocol to the delivery store and merged into that store's order files.
After the merge, a confirmation is automatically transmitted back from the delivery store and updated to the matching order at the selling store.

One of the difficulties of gearing up for a large project, such as the Totem project, is the long-term scheduling of resources. You need to provide ongoing work for the increased programming staff after the large project winds down. But scheduling the follow-on work too soon could create an overload with unreachable objectives.

"Thanks to the many wonderful features that came out of the Totem project, we made a sale to the 86-store United Furniture chain in the spring of 1994. That sale came just as the Totem project was winding to a close," Nummela says, "and many of the features that helped close the sale were only possible by using BBx."

Ideal has now installed IdealWare in United's Canadian central office and the first three Canadian stores. They are now installing their US central office and the first two US stores. Much of what they did for Totem has been transferable to the United project, in particular the multi-site/system integration, which United is carrying even farther. For example:

Each detail line of an order can now be delivered from a different location. Previously, specifying delivery from a location other than the sale origin involved the complete order.
Purchase orders can now be generated on a line-by-line basis from within a sales order for regularly stocked products, as well as for special order items.
A store can issue a purchase order to another store or warehouse and this will automatically create a sales order at the other location.
A store or warehouse can issue a transfer sales order to another store or warehouse and this will automatically create a purchase order at the other location.

As a result of technology developed in the Totem project and their switch to BBx and TAOS, Ideal now finds itself in a very attractive position. They are looking very seriously at focusing their IdealWare marketing efforts almost exclusively on multiple site situations. "Many purchasers for chains of stores and/or warehouses are looking for the sophistication that IdealWare offers, but can't afford the price for systems that can really do what they need," says Nummela. "We're now finding that we can bundle small SCO UNIX systems with BBx and IdealWare, all integrated into a wide area network via inexpensive dial-up modems, at prices not that much higher than those offered by DOS-based, single store POS systems."

Nummela continues, "We're also finding that many of our competitors at the higher end of the market simply can't compete with us in the area of multi-site/system integration. Instead, they try to convince the purchaser to go with a large central system and telecommunications. There are a number of down sides to this kind of alternative: cost is only one of them, performance is another, and putting all your eggs in one basket yet another. Most often, we're finding that our competitors are recommending this type of solution because it is the only thing they can offer."

Ideal has also developed a law office time billing and accounting system called IdeaLaw. They are in the process of re-writing IdeaLaw to be Windows-compliant, and are eagerly looking forward to the release of Windows-compliant BBx. "Between the two product lines, IdealWare and IdeaLaw, The Ideal Software Group is very happy we switched to BASIS development tools," says their president, Keith Nummela.