Information Builders > Case Studies > Broad-Reaching EAI Infrastructure Supports Rapid Growth at Winston Brands

Broad-Reaching EAI Infrastructure Supports Rapid Growth at Winston Brands

Company Size

1,000+

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

iWay Software
WebFOCUS
Professional Services

Tech Stack

IBM midrange systems
Microsoft SQL Server
Oracle

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Applicable Industries

Retail

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Supply Chain Visibility

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

Winston Brands, Inc. is a fast-growing direct-to-consumer multi-channel merchandising firm, offering a wide array of products through its popular catalog. Headquartered in a suburb of Chicago, IL and founded in 1997, Winston Brands differentiates itself in the highly competitive mail-order market through its ability to offer unique and appealing merchandise at exceptional value. The company’s brands include Collections Etc., which ranks in the top 100 catalogs on Multichannel Merchant’s list. For the past decade, Winston Brands has been on a course of accelerated growth.

The Challenge

Winston Brands, a fast-growing direct-to-consumer multi-channel merchandising firm, was facing challenges in integrating a wide array of systems, both internal and external, to support the increasing number of transactions resulting from the company's continued growth. The company's technology solutions struggled to keep pace with such rapid expansion, and they were replaced with several new, more robust information systems. However, connecting those systems, many of which were deployed simultaneously, proved to be a challenge. The organization evaluated all the other primary integration vendors on the market, including, TIBCO, and IBM.

The Solution

After evaluating several integration vendors, Winston Brands chose iWay Software integration solutions from Information Builders, for their ability to seamlessly access IBM midrange systems. Winston Brands also saw Information Builders as a company that would serve not only as a vendor, but also as a strategic business partner. With the assistance of Information Builders’ Professional Services department, Winston Brands created its first interface between its order management system by CommercialWare Inc. and its warehouse management system from Manhattan Associates, both of which run on IBM iSeries midrange servers running i5/OS. The expertise of the Professional Services team, combined with iWay’s pre-packaged integration components, eliminated the need to write custom code, helping Winston Brands to complete the project in just three months.

Operational Impact

A flexible environment enables the rapid creation – and reusability – of interfaces with minimal maintenance.
The ability to automate critical transactions and communications among employees, as well as with partners, has delivered a significant strategic advantage in a competitive market.
Maintaining the interfaces requires little effort on the part of Winston Brands’ IT team.
When iWay sends information to another system, it waits for a confirmation. If no confirmation comes, the data will be re-sent periodically until verification of delivery is received.
All iWay software and related integrations reside in a centralized server farm. If there is a server or communication failure, an immediate alert goes to IT personnel, who can then swiftly diagnose and correct the problem, or simply turn on another server to avoid downtime.

Quantitative Benefit