POS Software Company Gets Good VIBES from Elsinore Technologies' Incident Management Software

CRS Retail Systems is a leading provider of state-of-the-art software applications, hardware products and services to top retailers around the world. Whether they're selling books, women's clothing or SCUBA equipment, these retailers need reliable, flexible and user-friendly Point of Sale (POS) systems. That's exactly what they get from CRS' Windows® NT and DOS-based products.

But what helps CRS deliver its solutions effectively? The answer is easy: Visual Intercept enterprise incident management software from Elsinore Technologies.


From "Home Grown" to "Room To Grow"
To ensure the highest quality products and on-time delivery for its customers, CRS used a homegrown, text-based COBOL solution. That system couldn't keep pace with the company's growth or provide all the required future functionality.

"We were looking for a more intuitive Windows-based solution that would allow us to add as many users as we want over time, would accommodate our existing history logs and that could handle or easily be customized to handle our routing and reporting requirements," says Enid Lukacik, director of programming for CRS.

After reviewing solutions from several other vendors, CRS chose Elsinore's Visual Intercept suite. Known to CRS' staff and customers as VIBES (Visual Intercept Business Execution System), the software integrates with Microsoft productivity tools to organize, manage and communicate incidents across the entire enterprise, whether for development applications such as CRS' or any other project management application.


Everyone Can Put In Their 2 Cents

Offering the flexibility and user-friendly graphic interface inherent in Windows-based software, Visual Intercept allows an unlimited number of users to log on at any given time. Both internal staff and CRS' customers can enter incidents into the system.

"We enter incidents on behalf of nearly 100 customers, and this is by far the best way of tracking problems that we have come across," says John Beaumont, Technology Director at KPOS Computer Systems, Ltd., in Langley, Berkshire, U.K. KPOS integrates retail systems in Europe and the Middle and Far East using software from CRS and others. "The VIBES method is so much easier to use than manual methods, and being able to log directly in to the VIBES system to enter and track incidents is a lot more reliable and less time consuming than making phone calls and sending e-mails back and forth."

"Our customers are definitely excited about the Web-based interface in Visual Intercept. They immediately began entering incidents into the system in the short time that this capability has been available to them," says Lukacik. "This functionality ensures that our customers' software issues will be addressed as quickly and efficiently as possible."


Preserving Their History

Another feature of Visual Intercept that CRS finds attractive is the software's ability to import and work with information from existing databases.

"When we converted from our COBOL-based system to VIBES, we had more than 46,000 historical and active incidents in the database," says Lukacik. "This was one of the only solutions that would allow us to import the database and retain that history, which is crucial in our ability to quickly, easily and accurately resolve issues. And, while being able to import the database was important in and of itself, Visual Intercept enables us to do even better, more targeted searches."


Streamlining Processes and Saving Time

Through its standard and customized functionality, Visual Intercept also provides CRS with the extensive routing and reporting capabilities it requires.
"VIBES allows us to code in VBA," says Lukacik. "This enables us to do a lot of routing customization. We developed an on-screen pop-up message to ensure that developers enter the time they spend on modifications and issue resolution before passing the project on to the next phase."

VIBES has proven to be a major time saver in CRS' estimation process. Previously, a project manager would circulate a piece of paper to each manager involved in developing a project cost estimate, which was time consuming. Now, all projects are estimated electronically through VIBES.

"Customers used to report incidents via phone calls, faxes, or an e-mail to someone at the company," Lukacik says. "Now, customers can e-mail incidents to a central site and we can incorporate that information, along with all of our internal documentation relating to the incident, from estimating costs through resolution, in one area."

Elsinore customized several features for CRS, including mass update capability so that when a project is updated, the status of each incident within that project is updated accordingly, saving CRS the vast amount of time that would be required to manually change each incident status by hand. "When we have questions, when a problem arises, or when we request custom features, Elsinore is there quickly with an answer for us," says Lukacik.

CRS implemented VIBES in April 2001 on 100 user desktops and several off-site employees via Web Relay, the Web-enabled version of Visual Intercept, while customers have been able to access and enter incidents on the Web since September 2001. CRS is pleased with how smoothly the installation went and the extensive functionality that Visual Intercept provides.

"Visual Intercept saves us a lot of time, that's for sure, and it gives us greater control in managing our development projects," says Lukacik. "Visual Intercept not only met our expectations, it exceeded them.