United Supermarkets: Processes Workflows 20% Faster with Universal Automation Center

Background

For more than nine decades, United Supermarkets LLC has served customers in west and north Texas with well-known stores such as Market Street, Amigos, United Express and United Supermarkets.

To continue its success in a highly competitive industry, United Supermarkets needed more flexible and agile data processing that could enable self-service access by both technical and non-technical users.

Challenges

United Supermarkets’ job scheduler, which it had been using for more than eight years, didn’t provide the functionalities the company needed.

Moreover, the company’s job scheduler was no longer supported by the vendor, making the prospects of an upgrade to a newer, more capable version unlikely. The IT Ops team evaluated three alternative solutions.

“Universal Automation Center allowed us to utilize our strained resources, in the way they exist today, while still maintaining and handling issues as they came up.”

JEFF BRIDGES
Software Development Manager, United Supermarkets

Solution

United Supermarkets chose the Stonebranch Universal Automation Center (UAC) for several reasons.

• The IT team appreciated the solution’s user-friendly design and modern web and Java-based architecture.
• The RESTful Web Services API interface enabled easy integration with existing infrastructure.
• The UAC offers automated failover, which can rerun the stores’ processes without the need for human intervention. The queuing process ensures that messages are not lost in transit, minimizing the risk of missed executions and business disruption.

The fault-tolerant nature of the UAC also supports the lean operating culture at United Supermarkets, while the granularity in security definitions enables the IT team to securely grant role-based access to end users.

Other vendors claimed to have a 100% automated conversion, but Stonebranch was the only vendor who realistically estimated the “automated“ process, explaining the need for added manual resolution for exceptions. This was a more realistic estimate and more accurately set expectations. Then, Stonebranch exceeded expectations: United Supermarkets reports that the automation utilities converted 93% of processes without additional manual review required.

This automation has been transformational. “We can process workflows 20% faster, and processes are completed hours earlier.“ says Jeff Bridges, Software Development Manager.

“Completing the transition in just four weeks is a testament to the expertise of the Stonebranch services team,” says Mr. Bridges “They were knowledgeable with extremely fast and thorough responses.“

“We can process workflows 20% faster, and processes are completed hours earlier.”

JEFF BRIDGES
Software Development Manager, United Supermarkets

Results

“With Universal Automation Center, United Supermarkets has achieved a number of benefits, including fewer processing errors, simplified maintenance, easier management of SLAs because of automatic notifications, faster issue resolution due to graphical reporting of any local outages, enhanced DevOps due to greater visibility, maximized uptime because of role-based permissions that flexibly enable changes but also control them, as well as extensive audit reporting and tracking that enhances compliance,” says Mr. Bridges.

“Universal Automation Center allowed us to utilize our strained resources, in the way they exist today, while still maintaining and handling issues as they came up,” Mr. Bridges adds.