Judson Kinkade - At The Beach

In 1987, At The Beach tanning salon first opened its doors in Oklahoma City. Twenty-seven years and 77 stores in three different states later, times and technology needs have changed.

Before working with Argo Networks, At The Beach had a string of on-staff IT professionals. However, the logistics of the locations in three different states and the ever-growing number of stores proved to be burden the IT staff and manager Judson Kinkade could no longer handle.

Freeing At The Beach Staff

Argo Networks quickly went to work to set up a solid and secure remote access system to each store's network. The need to send an IT professional onsite and bear the cost and burden of lost time were gone. Using this new structure, problems at any given time could quickly be accessed remotely and resolved.

"Having someone else worry about the IT part of it and the systems part of it and the servers and all of that just takes a huge amount of time off my desk," said Kinkade.

He shared that there was no way he'd be able to oversee At The Beach's growth from 25 stores, when they first engaged with Argo Networks, to its all-time high of 77 without their help.

Customized Reporting

Not only has Argo Networks cut down on staff management time through outsourcing At The Beach's IT department, but it consistently creates custom reports for Kinkade and his staff to effectively assess investments of employee time and scheduling.

"The Labor Saver report projects the peak hours and recommends additional scheduling. Then, at the end of the week we can compare the projections to reality. It really helps us control our labor hours from a corporate level without having to run 75-80 reports for each store and compare it to schedules," Kinkade explained.

Argo Networks continues to engineer and improve At The Beach's custom reports to allow corporate to effectively assess the state of each store, from knowing which staff member does what and for how long to which stores don't open on time. This data gives the corporate team the power to make business decisions that positively impact each store's success and growth.

According to Kinkade, the reporting "makes it easier for the district managers to hold their people accountable and to deal with the situation at a store level without requiring that the CEO or COO get involved. The district managers can correct the issue before the rest of us even get into the office. That's improved what the corporate office has to watch and monitor."

Solutions

• Custom app development
• Custom reporting
• Server hosting and support

Customer Quote

"If I needed a change [in reports], or needed something new created, we used to contact the contract programmer and wait forever for it or they'd say no, it wasn't possible. Argo Networks has never told me no; they either do it or come up with a different solution and my turnaround on customized reporting is pretty quick." – Judson Kinkade