What is Spartan LEAN?
Spartan LEAN doesn’t have anything to do with a sports team but rather a way of thinking and implementing technology. It has more to do with a philosophy and technical lifestyle than anything.
Our philosophy is one of minimalism that yields simplicity. Minimalism doesn’t mean a lack of features it just means the right one’s!
For example:
Do you need 10/100 or 10/100/1000 or perhaps fiber for networking fabric in your retail outlets? The question might seem on its face an obvious one but the question is contextual and the answer is…it depends.
- How big is your floor space?
- Do your point of sale (POS) workstations need a physical Ethernet cable or can they go wifi?
- What is the throughput of your workstations or POS systems including printers?
- What’s the distance from the point of entry for Internet to the area where your workstations / POS’s connect?
…I’m sure we could come up with many more questions off the top of our heads!
See; you might not need 1000 Mbps (1 Gigabit per second). You might be able to save a ton of money by simply getting a 10/100 switch and not have one second of difference in transnational speed if the system bandwidth has minimal requirements. An example of this would be a credit card authorization, they happen quickly because the authorization, the answer of “yes” or “no” is quite small. It’s the encryption on modern equipment of that transaction that takes the time and is usually processed on the machine you slide your chip into. To run a POS depending on what type you have it’s possible you don’t need the traditional network fabric because it does WiFi!
You can tell then that the Spartan LEAN philosophy boils things down to their basic parts.
What’s needed? What’s functional? What’s next?
This is also how we save you money. Because things are precisely engineered for optimal performance without all the clutter and that also last. It’s functionality over form.
The perfect example of “functionality over form” is a real world example we encountered. A client had an AS400, you know…the ole’ “green screen” terminal stuff. To us this wasn’t a problem but the company “felt” that they were behind the times in tech. Quite the contrary. What they needed was an integration of modern tech that made them feel good while maintaining the AS400’s data entry model. They wanted a web based system and although many company’s would think this is an “upgrade” with respect to their data entry staff it’s a downgrade like nobody’s business!
Why?
Data entry is done quickly when you don’t have to remove your hands form the keyboard. It’s quickly done if you can tab or use system keyboard shortcuts to do things like submit or print. Try it. Do a “ctrl p” on your keyboard vs taking your hand off the keyboard > grabbing the mouse > moving the mouse pointed (if you can find it) to file > print…to get the same dialog box of control p it takes MANY more steps.
This is inefficient. Now imagine for a moment taking an order over the phone and having to type then move the mouse and click. That firm had to hire 4 or 5 more full time staff to keep up with the “new system”. How did that “feel”? Well…on the bottom line that new system was costlier than the old one and is also now less efficient.
What they should have done is integrated their data entry system into a more modern web based system. The system they had would do it. They could have invested in upgrades to make it all work better. The Spartan LEAN philosophy is…what makes things work leaner, meaner and far better than what you have or what you’re thinking about or currently doing?
If you’re thinking of cutting IT costs, reducing the workforce or putting in new systems you should reach out and talk to us about it.
You might find our way of examining your project, goals or ways of doing business interesting and possibly answer questions you didn’t even know you had!