Company Overview

Footnotes provide retail services both on a wholesale and retail basis. The main products Footnotes provides are women’s shoes, accessories and other products.NIT Connect was retained to make specific recommendations to improve the state of the network and increase the company’s ability to function in a fast, secure, and fault tolerant environment. Furthermore, NIT was retained to help relocate the IT portion of the company to a new office and warehouse facility. NIT Connect will help ensure that the transition is seamless, while implementing an infrastructure tailored to current and future business needs.

Footnotes was working with a network at a sub-optimal level.

The company’s most frequent problems among others, have been lack of a business class firewall, lack of a business class switch utilization, lack of electric, cable and Internet management in the new location, lack of implementation of workstation security policies to restrict user access, no implementation of server policies to create printers & shortcuts as needed automatically, lack of the ability to work and access files remotely through a VPN architecture, lack of back up preformed internally, lack of a uniform antivirus solution, no web filter to restrict user web access and lack of internet connections to T1 internet access.Other problems have been failed communications, connectivity and performance issues.

The company’s management decided that to run the company in a more efficient and cost effective manner they needed to improve customer service, keep costs down by standardizing many of its processes, update its computer and server systems, deploy servers to consolidate applications and thus some of the company’s everyday functions, avoid loss of productivity and increase the speed and accuracy of business decisions as well as the customer service and satisfaction.

Situation

NIT has conducted an assessment of Footnotes’ current IT infrastructure and has summarized key findings. NIT has also provided initial recommendations addressing infrastructure requirements, focusing mostly on areas that should be considered in the near to intermediate future, but also making long term recommendations.

The overall objectives of NIT in assessing Footnotes were the following:

• Evaluate the current network infrastructure architecture.
• Evaluate business requirements necessary for future network design and planning.
• Design and propose solutions based on business need.
• Recognize threats to network and operational security.
• Take Care of all current and future software and hardware needs of the company, so that it can increase productivity, contribute to the company’s bottom line and save time by making specific repetitive tasks easier and faster to perform.
• Help all personnel to concentrate on their everyday tasks without worrying about technical issues, failures or long interruptions in their daily jobs.

The benefits for Footnotes after implementing NIT’s proposals were multiple, but they can be summarized mainly as follows:

• By implementing NIT’s recommendations along with the appropriate network infrastructure solution, Footnotes increased productivity, customer satisfaction, speed of service, eliminated previously existing downtime, eliminated threats to network and operational security, took care of any current and future software and hardware needs of the company, eliminated time waste by making specific repetitive tasks easier and faster to perform, established remote access points so that employees could work from home, a different state or wherever they may be and finally helped personnel to concentrate on their daily tasks without having to deal with any unnecessary technical issues.
• With its new server and desktop productivity Footnotes has an integrated set of technologies that provide the foundation for a new way of doing business. NIT’s implementation has already benefited Footnotes in two major ways: improved individual and team productivity has been enabled through better communication and collaboration tools, and simplified IT management has been enabled through a complete, affordable network solution. These benefits have helped deliver reduced IT costs, improved data and network security, enhanced mobility, and provided Footnotes with better customer service.
• The new IT infrastructure takes less time to maintain, has no downtime or failures and a new set of communication and collaboration tools. Footnotes employees are increasing their productivity through better information management, improved mobility, and newly automated business processes. For a company of 35 people, this saves approximately 80 hours a week, equating to the workload of two employees that Footnotes would have to hire.
• The proposed infrastructure has also enabled Footnotes to improve customer service and connect with clients in new and mutually beneficial ways.Customers waiting time for reservations and communication has dropped to half, and thus Footnotes can process more clients and faster with the same amount of employees.
• Footnotes infrastructure has also been designed around the redundancy concept, meaning that future expansion of employees and/or offices has been taken into consideration. Furthermore, employees who might want to work from another office or from home save many hours every month.
• Finally, the company has simplified security management because of firewall and new configurations that will protect patients’ data and achieve compliance with HIPPA regulations.