Multiple Information Technology projects are underway at Jacobson Companies, all designed to make our company's systems smarter, more seamless and more efficient.
"All of these efforts work towards an overall departmental goal of making Information Systems more efficient through streamlining," says Brian Kautz, chief information officer. "These projects will move us in the right direction by reducing our application portfolio and consolidating our data centers to two locations."
Jacobson Companies currently has three major IT initiatives:
1. LINCS LG2 is the second generation of Jacobson's LINCS transportation management system. LG2 provides the needed functionality for expanding Jacobson's Total Freight Managment business. Part of the upgrade is the inclusion of an optimization engine that will automatically identify the best methods to ship products for customers including load consolidation to get the best price. There are a number of customers now being managed by LG2 with the remainder of the customers to be migrated in 2011.
2. The Visual DCMS Rationalization is the first step toward unifying all of Jacobson Companies' Warehouse Management Systems (WMS). Visual DCMS is an older Warehouse Management System (WMS) that runs many of the operations; it is being replaced by our Tier 1 WMS, Infor WM Provia. Two of the three Sioux City, IA, facilities and the Barilla facility in Ames, IA, have been migrated from Visual DCMS to Provia. The remaining three facilities will be migrated early 2011.
3. The Data Center Consolidation will transition our servers from seven different locations into two well-equipped data centers in Des Moines, IA and Camp Hill, PA - improving our efficiencies in supporting the infrastructure of the company. The project also includes implementation of an improved disaster recovery system that will allow the two data centers to back each other up. "Consolidating these data centers will streamline operations, allowing us to provide more consistent support and maintenance," says Craig Girsch, director of IT infrastructure. "Our long term infrastructure costs will be lower, and support will be better."
