Bartell Drugs: Case Study
Dating back to 1890, Bartell Drugs is the United States’ oldest family-owned drugstore brands.
Serving the Pacific-Northwest, primarily the Puget Sound corridor including Seattle, Bartell Drugs currently has 67 stores. The company is known for embracing innovation and technological advancement in both pharmacy and retail.
At Bartell Drugs, we are going through a large digital transformation, and I’m proud to say that WatServ is helping contribute to our success. From our first engagement with WatServ back in 2015, we’ve seen them as our technology partner, rather than simply our vendor, because they consistently provide solutions that are tailored to our business and recommendations that lead to efficiencies and cost savings. We continue to partner closely with WatServ because they’re great to work with. They offer value-added advice and facilitate collaboration with other partners like Microsoft and third-party vendors for which we are grateful.
The Challenge
In 2015, Bartell Drugs was interested in implementing an ERP for their business to manage critical functions using modules like Finance, Merchandising, Warehouse Management, Handhelds, Power BI/Analytics, Retail and EDI.
Needing a provider who could help them scale and grow by supporting their requirements in the cloud, WatServ was referred to Bartell Drugs by a VAR partner.
The Solution
WatServ’s team began by assessing the situation, starting with a review of the requirements prepared by the VAR partner for Dynamics AX implementation. Our team then developed an infrastructure design that would support 200 initial users performing core business functions, with room to increase users as more functionalities were added. Finally, a solution was created for the overall infrastructure and database design that would support high transaction volumes, while always ensuring optimal performance.
From there, WatServ got to work building the private cloud environment. This involved working closely with Bartell Drugs and the VAR partner to:
- Ensure the solution would meet its intended results;
- Test and optimize its performance and stability;
- Accommodate functionality and business process requests
Once the build was complete, phase 1 of the implementation went live for 200 AX users. This phase focused on back office. Next, phase 2 rolled out, which focused on retail services including POS and warehouse handhelds, as well as performance optimization and stabilization. During this time, WatServ also conducted an optimization exercise that resulted in an approximately 30% cost reduction of their managed services solution.
The Outcome
Today, our team continues to work closely with Bartell Drugs to help support their end-to-end retail, POS and warehouse systems and to look for new opportunities to innovate using the power of the cloud.
As a trusted advisor of Bartell Drugs, WatServ is proud to help the company grow their business’ infrastructure and ensure the maximum effectiveness of their applications.
