Premier Marine

Pontoon Maker Poised for Growth with New Server Solution

Premier Marine makes luxury pontoon boats, a bright spot in the choppy marine market. However, the company needed better information sharing and process automation to keep up with business growth. Premier Marine deployed the beta version of Windows® Small Business Server 2008 and has created information-sharing efficiencies that have sped order processing, improved customer response times, and increased business uptime.

 

Business Needs

Despite stormy waters in the boating market, Premier Marine has sailed to double-digit growth with a family-oriented vessel that appeals to a wide audience. Premier makes luxury pontoon boats that function as high-speed living rooms on water. In 16 years of operation, Premier Marine has become the fifth largest pontoon manufacturer in the United States and close to number-one in sales.
 
To keep its stellar customer service ratings high in the face of steady growth, Premier Marine needed to make it easier for employees to access critical business data any time from anywhere, automate processes, and better support its manufacturing application. Staff members operating in five different buildings in Wyoming, Minnesota, relied on phone calls and faxes to share up-to-date manufacturing, order, and customer data. The manual processes were inadequate to keep pace with rising business volumes.

The traveling sales and dealer-support staff, especially, struggled with poor information access. These workers had to wrestle with remote connections to business systems, and even when connected to business systems could not access all the data they needed. Also, management was worried about protecting data on smartphones and notebook computers. If the devices were lost or stolen, valuable business data could be compromised.

“We adopted Windows Small Business Server 2003 to make documents electronic and streamline basic workflows, and now we needed to further simplify our order-processing, customer-service, and other workflows and share more information,” says Shawn Crist, Regional Sales Manager for Premier Marine. 

Premier also needed to improve support for its Made2Manage manufacturing resource planning system (from Made2Manage), which failed frequently due to hardware problems and corruption of the underlying Foxpro database.

Solution

Premier’s longtime technology partner, Mytech Partners of Minneapolis, Minnesota, recommended upgrading to Windows® Small Business Server 2008 Premium Edition. This solution integrates e-mail, remote access, Windows SharePoint® Services, mobile device support, Internet connectivity, file and printer sharing, and data backup and restore in one small-business–friendly solution. Premium Edition comes with a second copy of Windows Server® 2008 Standard and Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Standard Edition for Small Business that run on a second server. Both servers are HP BLC3000 blade servers with two AMD Dual-Core Opteron processors.

A six-boat order that used to take an hour to process now takes 10 minutes. Shawn Crist Regional Sales Manager, Premier Marine

“The new version of Windows SharePoint Services was a key reason for our upgrade to Windows Small Business Server 2008,” Crist says. “The updated SharePoint sites have better support for line-of-business applications, industry-specific templates, workflows that can be attached to documents, and other features that make information-sharing much easier.” Additionally, by moving Made2Manage to SQL Server 2008, Premier Marine gained a highly reliable database at a more cost-effective rate than purchasing a separate SQL Server 2008 license.

The company created a SharePoint site where all departments can post real-time information about orders, shipping status, customer service issues, manufacturing progress, financial results, and other business data. Employees easily share calendars, project timelines, and meeting room schedules. "Instant access to data improves our ability to get information to customers and dealers quickly,” Crist says. “We’re a made-to-order company, so we have thousands of options. Fast turnaround is critical to sealing deals.”

Premier Marine also outfitted traveling employees with Windows Mobile® phones, which integrate with Windows Small Business Server 2008 and enable staff to access business data, e-mail, and even company documents with enhanced security. Windows Small Business Server 2008 features a built-in firewall, anti-spam protection, remote-device wipe, and other features to defend networks from malware intrusions.

Benefits

By moving to Windows Small Business Server 2008, Premier Marine has enhanced its competitiveness by providing better information-sharing, faster order processing, a better ability to accommodate growth, enhanced data security, and better performance of key applications.

• Better information-sharing and faster order processing. “Having one place to learn everything about the business helps every department,” Crist says about the company’s new SharePoint site. “Shipping can see the status of scheduled deliveries. Traveling employees can grab information at any time. Marketing can see what’s selling.” Premier also posts orders to its SharePoint site where they are immediately available for action. “A six-boat order that used to take an hour to process now takes 10 minutes,” Crist says.
  
  
• Ability to grow business. Using the new SharePoint site, dealers can not only look up and order parts online but collaborate with Premier Marine staff. “We can add notes, provide warranties, and post late-breaking recall information in one central place,” Crist says. “With our technology investments, we’re able to handle more business growth without significant staff increases.” Premier Marine is able to provide faster, more accurate responses to dealers and minimize mistakes. Customers get a better product, and dealers get more information, more quickly, which makes them successful.”
  
  
• Enhanced uptime, data security. “Since moving to Windows Small Business Server 2008, we’ve experienced zero downtime,” Crist says. “Data backups are much faster, easier, and more thorough, and we can perform backups throughout the day instead of just once at night.” The company also takes advantage of strong encryption and smartphone management features in Windows Mobile 6 to secure company data. Premier Marine can remotely wipe all business data from a smartphone if it’s lost or stolen.
  
  
• Improved support for line-of-business application. Made2Manage runs much faster and more reliably on SQL Server 2008, which improves business uptime and reduces employee overtime previously caused by frequent outages. “We also enjoy licensing efficiencies by having all these enterprise products bundled in one package.”
  

Windows Essential Server Solutions
Windows Small Business Server 2008 is part of the Windows Essential Server Solutions family, designed to help small and midsize businesses boost productivity and growth. Based on the latest innovations, Windows Essential Server Solutions dramatically simplify the deployment, ongoing management, and use of server technology.

For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/sbs08