Pro Staff

Pro Staff is a national staffing services company specializing in placing accounting, clerical, administration, information technology, creative services, and technical personnel. The company has more than 130 branch offices across the United States supported by a staff of 700. In 1996, Pro Staff placed more than 60,000 professionals. By the year 2001, Pro Staff expects to triple its size.

Pro Staff believes it can accomplish its aggressive 2001 growth initiative with minimal capital outlay and a flat, centralized IS support staff by using a thin-client/server solution based on WinFrame Enterprise. By placing Wyse Winterm terminals on the desktops, Pro Staff can further simplify user management while providing 32-bit Windows application support to low-cost terminals.

Presenting problem Pro Staff s operating philosophy is that of a regional company with a national presence. The company gives its branch offices complete autonomy to react to local market conditions and their particular needs for custom client reporting. Pro Staff knows that in today s competitive job market, information is power. That s why the company is pushing mission-critical PeopleSoft HRMS, for human resources management, and Windows staffing applications out to employees in branch offices over its AT&T-managed frame relay WAN.

The challenge: Provide branch offices with timely information.

Pro Staff s lean IS staff needed to provide branch offices with online, real-time access to business-critical applications from a centrally managed, consolidated base of information. As an additional complication, the IS staff had to address the complex set of challenges related to growth management and control that resulted from Pro Staff s tripling in size in five years.

Rather than give all the offices separate information systems and then try to consolidate the data, the IS staff decided to consolidate the data first and then give the offices high-performance, remote access to mission-critical information and the freedom to customize it through WinFrame. The IS department also based its decision on Pro Staff s expected growth over the next five years with plans to add more than one new branch office every month, it would be nearly impossible to set up and support a LAN in each office.

Hardware and software The Pro Staff thin-client/server networking environment includes:

Pro Staff deploys human resources management, payroll, e-mail, and productivity applications over a WAN.

• Digital Prioris 4-way 133 MHz
  
  
• Pentium server with 512 MB of RAM
  
  
• Microsoft Windows NT file servers
  
  
• Oracle database
  
  
• Frame relay WAN
  
  
• Wyse Winterm Windows terminals

Pro Staff uses WinFrame to deploy PeopleSoft HRMS, payroll, and financial client/server applications, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office, and a 32-bit Windows staffing application over its WAN.

Solution and results Using a thin-client/server solution with the WinFrame application server software and Wyse Winterm terminals, Pro Staff has been able to bring a new branch office on line within a week. When setting up a new office, Pro Staff ships Wyse Winterm terminals to the branch office and then plugs them into the WAN. Business-critical applications are instantly available from the WinFrame server which resides centrally and is managed from headquarters.

Pro Staff effectively uses Windows-based terminals.

To date, Pro Staff has implemented seven WinFrame Enterprise application servers to deploy PeopleSoft HRMS, payroll, and financial client/server applications, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office, and a 32-bit Windows staffing database to its branch office employees. Their goal was to have all 130 offices running applications centrally on the WinFrame servers by mid-1997. Instead of putting a fully equipped PC on each employee s desk, Pro Staff realized the up-front acquisition and overall application ownership savings of putting thin ICA-based Winterm Windows terminals on the desktops instead.

Over the long term, Pro Staff expects to reduce the annual cost of application ownership dramatically, since all application deployment, user configuration, and support occur centrally from WinFrame servers located at the corporate headquarters. WinFrame Enterprise has satisfied the management, support, and budget requirements of Pro Staff s IS department while providing its branch office workers with fast, real-time access to business-critical Windows information.

The IS director at Pro Staff credits the thin-client/server WinFrame/Winterm solution with providing his organization with several competitive advantages. First it provides the flexibility to enter data at the staffing offices level; so the people who know most about their market information are entering it, ensuring greater detail and accuracy. This information can then be consolidated and centrally managed. Second, WinFrame and Winterm enable rapid implementation, so Pro Staff can add new offices within a week. Finally, WinFrame empowers branch offices with real-time access to information, helping them retain autonomy and better respond to local market needs with customized information.

WinFrame will carry Pro Staff well into the next century, enabling the company to extend the reach of its mission-critical applications to the Internet as well as on its corporate intranet. The company plans to use WinFrame s Windows ALE capabilities to integrate Windows applications into its Web site so that applicants can register on line, query databases for job listings, and so on.