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Associated Grocers of New England
Successfully managing a grocery business today takes more than stocking products and speeding up checkouts. Just ask nearly 500 grocery retailers in New England and upstate New York – a group encompassing small grocery and convenience stores a well as small supermarket chains – all of whom rely on Associated Grocers of New England (AG New England) to help them run their businesses.
Founded in 1946, this food co-op wholesaler offers its members more than 18,000 grocery items plus retail support services such as marketing, merchandising, accounting and retail systems. In 2006 Associated Grocers of New England moved into a new, 380,000 square foot distribution center in Pembroke, NH. As the business has grown, the information technology needs have grown more complex and important. Norton Lamb & Company of Yarmouth, Maine (NLC) has helped ease the growing pains for AG New England.
Before they started working with Norton Lamb & Company AGNE’s IT staff was spending a great deal of time in diagnosing and fixing problems and installing upgrades rather than leveraging the benefits of new technology solutions necessary to support a growing business. Norton Lamb & Company designed and implemented an improved IT infrastructure solution that changed all that.
Ron Shink, President of Norton Lamb & Company explains, “Our goal was to simplify the entire IT environment by reducing the number of moving parts, increasing system reliability to unexpected levels and delivering higher functionality at a reduced overall cost.” NLC architected a consolidated solution that uses fewer but more powerful servers to save on management, space and electrical power, all the while improving uptime for AG New England’s employees and its customers.
AG New England’s technical specialists are now able to concentrate on business improvements rather than constant troubleshooting. Maintenance calls have all but disappeared, software upgrades are easily performed, downtime is a thing of the past and fewer resources are required to maintain the IT environment.
But the story doesn’t end there. As AG New England’s business continues to grow so too do their technology needs, and Norton Lamb & Company has been there to help. NLC further improved the reliability and capabilities of AG New England’s infrastructure recently by implementing server virtualization. Virtualized servers allow AG New England to run multiple new workloads using existing hardware for a better ROI and to reduce overhead like heat, power and cooling costs.