Harps Food Stores, the august Springdale, Ark.-based grocery chain, was reveling in its growth through the early part of the decade – until it began to get boxed into a corner by its technology.

Founded in 1930 by the husband-and-wife team of Harvard and Floy Harp, the company takes pride in its humble beginnings feeding rural families in northwest Arkansas. Now competing in the shadow of Wal-Mart and its ever-increasing share of the grocery market, Harps’ growth strategy focuses on differentiation from its rivals based on quality, service and freshness.

In recent years, the chain has grown dramatically amid the remodeling of stores, moves to larger buildings and the addition of units that brought to more than 50 its locations across Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. The company also serves as a distributor to more than 200 independently-owned convenience stores.

But in a dynamic retail environment characterized by tight operating margins, Harps’ growth was stifling its supply chain through system inefficiency. Accounting, warehouse, general ledger, accounts receivable, payroll, inventory control and human resources all needed elbow room in the supply chain. Processes would bog down, crimping transaction performance and productivity, says Gary Bennett, Harps’ director of information systems.

Harps needed a technology refresh — without rebuilding from scratch and breaking the bank. And it needed to ensure that all functions within the supply chain would gain from greater efficiency and data synchronization.

Harps had been a loyal customer of the IBM Informix Dynamic Server since the mid-1990s; the server supports approximately 1,000 Harps programs. But it was running on a UNIX operating platform over outdated NCR hardware: it couldn’t marshal the speed required to complete online transactions or run batch processing jobs efficiently. And as the chain’s growth demanded more capacity in its supply chain, Bennett began prowling around for a solution.

The decision was made to continue with the Informix Dynamic Server, upgrading to Version 9.4 running on IBM System x with a Linux operating system to increase capacity and performance. Working with IBM turnkey partner Gillani, a Richardson, Texas, software developer of synchronized supply chain management applications, the upgrade migrated Harps’ business applications to Gillani’s FourGen CASE Tools, Version 8.1, an end-to-end supply chain management solution.

The FourGen suite supports a concept called “modifiability-by-design” that offers users the ability to upgrade and reconfigure underlying Informix infrastructure without disrupting ongoing business applications. The Linux operating platform provides users with a flexible and open architecture with lower overall total cost of ownership, according to Gillani.

Automatic replenishment
One warehousing feature supported by the upgrade is an auto replenishment system, Bennett says. The system tracks what each Harps store has sold and compares that data with product in the warehouse.

“We know to automatically send product to that store again,” Bennett says. “That’s a very important process for us and it keeps the store managers from accidentally ordering from an outside vendor what we have on hand. Hopefully, the store manager will pretty much trust that they will be sent the things that they need.”

Bennett says store growth tends to affect warehousing to a greater degree than other functional areas. “You add customers, but not hours to the shift,” he says. “You’re asking them to pick more items. You’re asking your accounts payable and accounts receivables to do more. Trying to stay ahead of the curve and knowing what’s coming is something that we always consider. When we decided to do this upgrade we knew it would be a system we would have to live with for several years.”

The Informix upgrade, which became operational in September 2006, reduced data processing time dramatically, according to Bennett. “Things that used to take 10 minutes, suddenly took 40 seconds. You can imagine how happy our end users were about that.”

Jerry Keesee, IBM director for Informix Dynamic Server Development, says efficient data synchronization means “having one version of the truth” and the upgrade allows users to guarantee availability by pre-setting the architecture.

In migrating to the upgraded Informix platform, it was vital that Harps Foods protect prior technology investments it had made in the platform, largely on the software side. Harps’ information technology management function also needed to leverage skill sets on Informix applications it had acquired over the years.

Keesee says protecting investments in a database platform is critical for retailers in order to assure favorable cost of operations. “They have very thin profit margins and they need to operate as low-cost as possible.”

Customer connection
Given Harps Foods’ corporate posture — the company seeks to connect with its customers on a personal level with community support and charitable giving — an efficient supply chain means ultimate savings for customers, Bennett says. While it does not pretend to challenge Wal-Mart on price, Harps stores seek to provide a full shopping experience.

The Informix tech refresh is “a very important process for us in passing on savings to the customers by controlling all of the flow and tracking everything … that goes in and out of the warehouse,” he says.

A future step will be to drive data synchronization directly to the store level by capturing POS information within the Informix database environment. “We’re always looking for more ways to do things efficiently, and our end users don’t have a lack of imagination,” Bennett says. “They can tell me how their jobs will be easier than I can tell them.”