Tire Discounters Inc., a 45-store tire chain based in Cincinnati, Ohio, has signed a multi-year contract with Time Warner Telecom Inc. for voice and data services.
Tire Warner will provide Tire Discounters converged voice and data service through its Integrated Local Area Network (ILAN).
"At one time, we had a minimum of eight different vendors providing voice and data services to our stores," says Nate Guy, IT director for Tire Discounters. "The Time Warner Telecom team was able to consolidate everything onto their network and eliminate the hassles we had managing so many different contracts and vendors.
"This is particularly helpful to us considering the 20 additional locations we plan to open in the next couple of years. All I have to do is place one call to get them on line."
The ILAN solution offers customers a highly secure, flexible and efficient way for customers to connect multiple locations across town or across the country. Time Warner Telecom says the service provides scalable data, Internet and voice, including long distance, connectivity over a single connection.
"The services have been virtually plug-and-play so far," says Guy. "Previously, our IT team would spend at least an hour a month sorting out communications issues for our company.
"With this service installed at all our locations, we expect we'll be able to liberate 40 labor-hours per month to apply to other critical projects."
According to Guy, the reliability of the ILAN service is a big plus. "Our store employees help customers by accessing a point-of-sale application housed on a server at our headquarters data center. The uptime we've gained with Time Warner Telecom better supports that mission-critical application."
The ILAN solution is designed to meet the needs of multi-location businesses like Tire Discounters, says Tim Raffel, general manager for Time Warner Telecom in Cincinnati.
Tire Discounters' 45 stores are located in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. It is the 16th largest tire store chain in the United States, according to Modern Tire Dealer. For more information, visit www.tirediscounters.com/index.html.
