For Tom McDonald, there's no such thing as a typical day at the office.
McDonald, president of Data Support Inc., a 16-year-old distributorship in Nanuet, N.Y., relishes the variety his job entails. His distributorship has installed direct thermal bar coded ticket printers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, implemented a bar code system to manage supply usage at the New York City Police Department's forensic lab, and implemented a bar code tracking system for advanced technology company Lockheed Martin Corp.
Tom McDonald (left), president of Data Support Inc., a 16-year-old distributorship in Nanuet, N.Y., explains the features of BACKTRACK® asset and inventory tracking software to Jeffrey Futoran, corporate secretary of Eveready Insurance Company, New York. The software streamlined the insurance company's claims file tracking and certified mail receipt processes.
"In a very competitive market such as New York City, offering bar code systems has made us different," McDonald says. "It's allowed us to compete for and win the business of some of the largest corporations in the area--business that a small company like ours normally wouldn't be able to compete for."
Bar code systems are in demand by companies that want to improve efficiency and productivity. "The cost of inventory is the main reason companies are looking at bar code systems," McDonald says. "They allow companies to better manage inventory movement and reduce the number of hours needed to do it."
Using a bar code system also eliminates errors associated with identification and data collection and accelerates the throughput process. "Instead of someone writing down on an inventory sheet what items were picked or moved, then giving the sheet to someone else who punches the data into a computer, it's all done by scanning a bar code," McDonald says.
One customer that's dazzled by Data Support's bar coding capabilities is Eveready Insurance Company, a privately held New York corporation that offers private passenger and commercial automobile, property and casualty insurance to clients in downstate New York, particularly New York City's five boroughs. (See "THE END USER" on page 46). Previously, employees at Eveready Insurance Company often spent hours searching for specific claims files. The company also wanted to improve its process of recording the receipt of time-sensitive legal and claims documents sent via certified mail. By implementing bar code tracking systems, Data Support helped Eveready Insurance Company streamline operations and eliminate wasted employee time.
Setting the Company Apart
When McDonald started Data Support in 1987, business forms and labels accounted for 100 percent of the distributorship's sales. "We were basically one of hundreds of distributorships that customers could talk to," McDonald says. "When you went into a new client, you waited in the waiting room for your appointment. Then you met with the operations manager or purchasing people and tried to convince them that you had better products and services than everyone else." McDonald realized that in order to stay competitive, Data Support needed to offer clients something unique.
McDonald found that unique offering when a large direct mail catalog company asked Data Support to provide a labeling system. The system included bar coded labels, which were affixed to the company's products to manage returns. "It was one of those 'eureka' moments," McDonald says. "There weren't a lot of companies offering bar coding, so I saw it as a good opportunity to make our company different than others that were out there."
Data Support formed an alliance with a local systems integrator firm and began reselling the company's bar code warehouse inventory system. "The fastest way anyone can learn about bar code systems is to form an alliance with a company that's really in the business," McDonald says. The systems integrator trained Data Support employees on bar code systems and joined the distributorship on sales calls. "It provided me with instant credibility when I called on clients," McDonald says. Soon, the system integrator's principal joined Data Support's staff.
After adding bar code systems to his company's product mix, McDonald's sales calls evolved into formal meetings with five or six operations employees in a client's conference room. Soon, clients such as the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York were calling on Data Support. The distributorship worked with the client to implement a bar code evidence tracking system, which included a computer with bar code tracking software, a portable data collection terminal, a label printer, labels and printer ribbons. When the U.S. Attorney's Office receives a new piece of evidence, it prints a bar coded label, affixes it to the item and scans the bar code, recording the date and time the evidence
