California Tanning Salons

LA's premiere indoor tanning company, California Tanning Salons, has been in business since 1985 and was about to nearly double its size from 12 to 20 retail locations when they retained Plexus IT maintain their computer network. The main office consisted of a peer-to-peer network with a desktop PC running Windows XP was hosting the company's critical financial data, a 500MB QuickBooks file. With 6 regular office staff connecting, QuickBooks crashed on a daily basis causing untold data and productivity loss. It seemed none of the office PCs had the same version of Windows or Office which lead to even more problems. For their machines to freeze or crash on a regular basis was normal to them.

The environment was swimming in paper as they received all salon supply orders, maintenance requests and sales figures by fax, plus each PC had a locally attached printer. Sales figures were phoned into an answering machine at the end of each shift from each salon. In turn, these messages were played and the numbers were transcribed daily into ledger books for the company owner to peruse later.

The pain points were easy to identify and, over the course of two weekends to minimize employee down time, Plexus installed a robust new HP DL380 server running Windows Small Business Server. With a 75-user capability, the server had built-in Exchange, SharePoint, MS SQL, file security, print services and more. Desktop PCs were replaced or upgraded with Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Office 2007.

In this short time the company went from using unreliable, difficult to manage POP email accounts from their web hosting vendor to enjoying the numerous benefits and features that come with Exchange Server and Outlook. Salon Managers were given email accounts and could quickly and effectively communicate with the office or other salons using Outlook Web Access or their mobile devices. With each PC joined to the new domain in Active Directory, the security and stability enjoyed by office staff was like a dream come true. With the office stabilized, plexus moved to bring CTS into the new century by creating a SharePoint portal for salons to transmit their sales numbers. At the end of each shift, rather than make a call, staff enter their totals into the SharePoint site, giving office staff real-time information they id not have before. Gone were the daily voicemail messages and black ledger books. Using SharePoint to gather the information saves the company at least 20 hours per week in labor.

These are just a few of the things Plexus IT was able to do for CTS. We'd love to tell you how we saved them reams of paper by leveraging the fax server built into Small Business Server, and the integration of 8 additional salons into their WAN-based POS system, but suffice it to say that it has been a huge success and we're very excited about helping them with future projects, like a POS system upgrade early next year. Would you like to enjoy the same level of stability and security CTS enjoys? Give u a call to learn how quickly we can stop your machines from crashing all the time so you can focus on your business!

 
The Goetzman Group

The Goetzman Group was spending nearly $2000 per month for support of 2 servers and 5 workstations. Plexus immediately reduced their monthly charges to less than 25% of what they were paying. Additionally, rather than up-sell them services they did not need, Plexus utilized equipment and software they already owned so that they now enjoy a secure, reliable network at a reasonable price. How did we do it? Simple. It was easy to see that such a small environment did not need so much attention and recommended a mere one hour per week worth of pro-active maintenance to ensure that their servers and workstations had the latest Microsoft and virus updates. Plus we look at the server's event logs to make sure there aren't larger threats looming.

Next we realized that Goetzman Group was paying for third party products that did not meet their employees needs and, in fact caused greater conflict with existing applications. By migrating from one email platform to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, users are much happier and more productive, plus Goetzman was able to discontinue third-party spam blocking service thanks to the very effective filter built into Exchange 2003. That alone saves them an additional $400 per month!

Microsoft was so impressed with the improvements made by Plexus IT at the Geotzman Group they conducted two Case Studies.
Windows Vista

 
Office 2007


How much money can Plexus help you save on IT? Give us a call to find out more.

 

What some of our customers are saying...

“ We're fortunate to have found such a quality IT professional to manage our network.
Running our business requires heavy reliance on technology, and you do a tremendous
job supporting us, not to mention the drastic improvements you've made to our network
since coming on board last year. The bottom line is that you make it possible for us
to do our job, and you do it with honesty and integrity, something I know can be hard
to find these days. Thanks.”

 

Jason Crawshaw,
Controller
The Goetzman Group

 

“I can't tell you how much I appreciate you stopping in and taking care of things.
Thanks for fitting us into your busy schedule & also for the discount in pricing.
You always go above & beyond. Thank you for that.”

 

Sheeba Rankin
Office Manager
Low Vision Services, Inc

 
Health Plans Online, Inc.

Health Plans Online, Inc. is one of Southern California's hottest online health insurance brokers. Doing their business completely online, the availability of their systems is absolutely critical and Plexus is always there to ensure 100% uptime. Here's what the owner of this company had to say about us:

“I liked you when we first met, then I recognized that you really know IT.
You are easy to reach, and arrive on time.
Thanks for everything, I really appreciate you.”

 

Gary Whiddon, President
Health Plans Online