Microsoft .NET
Customer Solution Case Study
Garden Center Retailer Grows Profit Margins
Up to 10 Points with .NET-based Solution
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Retail
Customer Profile
Lititz, Pennsylvania-based Stauffers of
Kissel Hill (SKH) operates seven garden
centers throughout south central
Pennsylvania and sells food, grocery, and
home accessories.
Business Situation
The company could not determine the
profitability of each item sold and so had
no way to make buying decisions to
maximize profitability.
Solution
SKH migrated from its Unisys mainframe to
a solution from groWare based on the
Microsoft® .NET Framework.
Benefits
 Key inventory reduced 25 percent
 Profit margins up as much as 10 points
 Time to take inventory cut by 67 percent
 Cost of taking inventory cut by 50
percent
 Custom reports created 100 percent
faster
“The biggest benefit of the .NET-based solution is that
we have tremendous power to make more profitable
decisions than we ever could before."
Jere Stauffer, Director, Garden Center, Stauffers of Kissel Hill
Garden center retailer Stauffers of Kissel Hill (SKH) could not tie its
point-of-sale (POS) system to its mainframe-based inventory
management system. It had no way to make buying decisions
based on the profitability of each item and, thus, no way to
maximize profit. To correct this, the company used Raining Data’s
Pick Data Provider tools to migrate off the mainframe and adopted
POS and inventory management software based on the Microsoft®
.NET Framework and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 Reporting
Services. The solution, from industry leader groWare, delivers
faster, more accurate, and more in-depth information than
Stauffers had before. The result: SKH has cut key inventories by 25
percent, boosted profit margins per item by as much as 10 points,
reduced the time to take inventory by 67 percent, and cut the time
to create custom reports in half.
“Thanks to SQL Server
Reporting Services and
Raining Data’s
Reporting Services
Connector, we can
create custom reports in
half the time we could
before.”
Jere Stauffer, Director, Garden Center,
Stauffers of Kissel Hill
Situation
Stauffers of Kissel Hill (SKH) is a privately
held retail garden center based in Lititz,
Pennsylvania, with seven retail locations and
a pair of distribution centers/warehouses in
south-central Pennsylvania. Stauffers also
sells food, grocery, and home accessories.
The company generates more than U.S.$23
million in revenues.
For 13 years, Stauffers ran its warehouse
inventory management system off a Unisys A
Series mainframe running proprietary thirdparty software. The system managed
approximately 40,000 SKUs, but the software
only supported the distribution side of the
business and had no point-of-sale (POS) or
retail reporting capability. Stauffers used its
food and grocery POS to manage some of its
garden sales, but this solution didn’t
integrate with the garden inventory system,
didn’t include the garden-only stores, and
couldn’t accurately capture the complexity of
garden sales, in which plants purchased from
a variety of vendors could be combined and
sold as a single flat at a single price point.
Inventory taking was a particularly difficult
process under this system. It took up to 20
people three days to inventory a single
location, writing down product numbers and
then keying them at a desktop using a
mainframe-style green screen. If a product
number was entered incorrectly, the error
was unlikely to be caught until days later,
when the inventory was printed out and taken
to the store location for confirmation.
Beyond that, there was no way for retail sales
to inform the company’s purchasing
decisions. “We had a ‘push’ system with the
buyers making purchasing, pricing,
markdown, and inventory management
decisions based on what the warehouse had
moved to the stores,” says Jere Stauffer,
Director, Garden Division, SKH Management
Company. “There was no POS-to-purchasing
correlation.”
For example, buyers knew if a given product
had been pushed out to the stores—but not
whether it had sold at full retail or at 75
percent off during the end-of-season
clearance sale. “We were dealing with grossly
incomplete information based on huge
assumptions,” says Stauffer. “We were
managing our retail business based on
eyeball estimates and two physical inventory
counts per year. My reporting from retail was
based entirely on the assumption that if I
sent it to the store and it’s not there, I must
have sold it. We didn’t know our shrinkage or
average selling points. Did we make money or
lose our shirts on a given item? Too often, we
didn’t know. We had no real-time data, no
way to drill down on data.”
Matters came to a head when Stauffers’s
mainframe system was nearing the end of its
lease. The company had stopped accepting
updates for the software years earlier,
because the customizations it had built up
over time meant that its development staff
was spending all of its time testing updates
against the customizations. Now, Stauffers
would have to spend $250,000 for a new
mainframe lease “and gain nothing in new
functionality,” according to Stauffer.
Or, it could consider a new solution.
Solution
Stauffer set several criteria for the company’s
new solution. He wanted a solution that
would capture all of the “green” products that
Stauffers sold at point of sale—and all of the
complexity unique to those “green” products.
He wanted a solution that could be modified
and scaled easily to support future growth.
Most of all, he wanted a solution that would
inaugurate a major change in the way
Stauffers did business.
“[W]e get our
information more
quickly and it costs less
to produce it. We also
have drilldown capability
to explore and truly
understand the
numbers in ways that
just weren’t possible
before.”
Jere Stauffer, Director, Garden Center,
Stauffers of Kissel Hill
“We wanted to drive a transition in the
culture within the company,” says Stauffer.
“Instead of pursuing sales volume without
being able to maximize margins and profits,
we wanted a system that would enable us to
focus on gross margin return on inventory. To
get there, we needed to quickly and
accurately report on SKU activity, and get
data into the hands of the decision makers so
they could use that data to drive better
decision making.”
To achieve these goals, Stauffers turned to
groWare, a Kitchener, Ontario–based
provider of software for nurseries, nursery
distributors, and garden centers. groWare
began by installing its groWare retail POS
system, running on the Microsoft® Windows
Server™ 2003 operating system, part of
Microsoft Windows Server System™
integrated server software, into Stauffers
garden centers.
For the inventory management portion of the
solution, groWare migrated its solution to the
Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1. The
migration was accomplished using the
Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003 and
Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET development
systems and Windows® Forms to write an
application interface called GreenPO. That
software relied on the existing Raining Data
Pick D3 database management
software−based application logic, rather than
having to re-create that logic from scratch.
Pick D3 has a simple structure but allows for
complex definitions of data structures and
program logic.
The migration also took advantage of the
Raining Data Pick Reporting Services
Connector for .NET, which allows the Pick D3
database to retrieve, manipulate, and update
data through the industry-standard Microsoft
ADO.NET data access and programming
model. The use of the Pick Reporting Services
Connector enables the Pick database and
application logic to participate in real-time,
service-oriented architecture-based solutions.
As a result of the .NET−based tools, the
ability to preserve much of its existing
software investment, and the ability to use
the same Pick database instead of creating a
new one from the ground up, groWare had its
.NET-based GreenPO ready in three months
and at a cost of $25,000—compared to the
2.5 years and $250,000 it took to fully
reengineer the groWare application running
on Oracle.
In addition to minimizing development time
and cost, the .NET-based approach also
enabled groWare to minimize testing because
the solution’s core code and business rules
did not change. The subsequent process of
designing the .NET-based solution for
Stauffers took additional time, requiring
customization of the application logic for
Stauffers’s company-specific processes.
For the crucial reporting portion of the
solution, groWare utilized Microsoft SQL
Server™ 2000 Reporting Services. SQL
Server 2000 is part of Microsoft Windows
Server System integrated server software.
The groWare solution uses SQL Server
Reporting Services in three ways:
 •The direct use of SQL Server Reporting
Services for new reports that take full
advantage of the caching, delivery options,
drilldown, and dynamic formatting options
of Microsoft software.
 •Migration of existing Pick-native reports
to SQL Server Reporting Services, where
they can be accessed by decision makers
within the company. Stauffers has about
100 existing reports and uses 25 to 30 on
a regular basis.
 •Enabling employees to create SQL Server
Reporting Services−based reports from
Pick-native data files without having to
know or understand Pick data dictionaries
or multivalues.
Figure 1 Windows Forms enables
a rich presentation layer,
replacing the text-only screen of
the former solution.
Another key enhancement of the solution is
the use of Windows Forms to create a rich,
graphical presentation tier to replace the textonly interface of the former inventory
management and retail POS solutions (see
Figure 1). The result uses tabs, drop-down
boxes, and other graphical controls to
present far more data on a single screen than
was possible before, while making that data
more intelligible than in the prior
environment.
Figure 2 shows the solution and includes the
following components:
 A computer server in corporate
headquarters that supports the groWare
application and Pick D3 database. It also
Figure 2 The groWare solution
uses Raining Data’s Reporting
Services Connector to integrate
SQL Server Reporting Services
with Sales Core data in the Pick
D3 database.
supports one of the two
warehouse/distribution centers—over
wireless broadband capability—and
provides POS server-side support for the
four stores that sell both garden and food
items. This computer also supports the
company’s Microsoft Dynamics™—Great
Plains® accounting software, now part of
Microsoft Dynamics business software.
A second computer for the groWare
application at the second
warehouse/distribution center.
 Three computer servers, one in each of the
garden-only stores, to support POS and
connection to GreenPO.
 A computer, based at headquarters, for
SQL Server Reporting Services. Stauffers is
also using SQL Server Reporting Services

“It’s a bonus that this
solution not only
outperforms the
mainframe, but also
costs less.”
Jere Stauffer, Director, Garden Center,
Stauffers of Kissel Hill
to create and access reports from the
Microsoft Dynamics GP software.
 A development server.
Benefits
With the .NET-based groWare solution,
Stauffers has been able to cut a key inventory
by 25 percent, boost profit margins by as
much as 10 points, cut the time to take
inventory by 67 percent, and cut the time to
create custom reports in half.
Better Data Yields Higher Profits
“One of the best ways to improve margins is
to improve inventory turns,” says Stauffer.
“Our goal is to have all managers and buyers
make better decisions on inventory items and
levels, to increase inventory turns and
profits,” says Stauffer. “Thanks to the .NETbased groWare solution, that’s happening.
We’re getting out of ‘dogs’ quicker. We’re
seeing margins in poorer-performing areas
stabilize and in some product lines they are
coming up strong.”
Some Stauffers locations have seen a 10point rise in profit margins in underperforming departments, to about 35 percent
from prior performance in the mid-20 percent
to 30 percent range, by eliminating lessprofitable inventory. For example, Stauffers
has reduced inventory by more than 20
percent among the 40,000 SKUs in its home
accents department based on information
available through the .NET-based solution.
“Our reports showed us what wasn’t selling in
as early as April—when we otherwise might
not have had this information until August, if
at all,” says Stauffer. “We could run a sale in
late June and July to get items out of the way,
instead of holding onto them for months. That
information in turn is passed along to our
buyers and enables them to order more
profitably.”
In another example, Stauffers formerly ran a
daylong off-site meeting for 10 of its buyers in
an attempt to determine what had sold well
and what had sold poorly over the course of
the year. The buyers had then used their best
guesses out of this meeting to evaluate
products at garden trade shows and to make
buying decisions for the coming year.
Now, armed with highly detailed and accurate
data on the profitability of each of its 60,000
SKUs, Stauffers was able to cancel that offsite meeting and, instead, institute a meeting
after the trade shows to make highly effective
decisions about what would likely sell well
based on the available data.
“Having information in a timely and accurate
way, and being able to use that information
to define a more effective program for the
coming year—that’s a shift from ‘push’ to
‘pull’ if I ever saw one,” says Stauffer.
“The biggest benefit of the .NET-based
solution is that we have tremendous power to
make more profitable decisions than we ever
could before,” says Stauffer. “It’s a bonus
that this solution not only outperforms the
mainframe, but also costs less. The ability to
leverage Pick data tools and groWare
software instead of continuing on the
mainframe is immensely valuable to us.”
Time to Take Inventory Cut 67 Percent
One of the keys to the faster and more
accurate information on which Stauffers’s
buyers are now making decisions is faster
and more accurate inventory reports. Thanks
to the solution, the time to take inventory per
store has been cut 67 percent, from three
days to one. Stauffers now has the single-day
inventory snapshot that it wanted to boost
accuracy.
That accuracy is further enhanced by the use
of handheld devices that eliminate the timeconsuming and error-prone steps of manually
“We have eliminated the
tons of work we formerly
had in correcting errors
during inventory.”
Jere Stauffer, Director, Garden Center,
Stauffers of Kissel Hill
recording data and then rekeying it into the
system. Stauffers has been using Symbol
1750 devices and now is considering a move
to adopt Pocket PCs running Microsoft
Windows Mobile® software because of their
greater ease of use.
In addition to increasing timeliness and
accuracy, the new inventory-taking system
also cuts costs. Stauffer estimates that labor
costs associated with taking inventory have
declined by 50 percent.
“We have eliminated the tons of work we
formerly had in correcting errors during
inventory,” says Stauffer. “Beyond the
benefits in lower cost, greater accuracy, and
speed, it also makes the process far less
frustrating for everyone.”
Report Creation Time Cut in Half
The use of SQL Server Reporting Services
gives buyers and other Stauffers employees
real-time access to reports based on the
inventory counts as well as on 20,000 daily
transactions throughout the stores. The result
is the faster and more accurate reporting on
which Stauffers is now basing its decisions.
“Thanks to SQL Server Reporting Services
and Raining Data’s Reporting Services
Connector, we can create custom reports in
half the time we could before,” says Stauffer.
“That means we get our information more
quickly and it costs less to produce it. We
also have drilldown capability to explore and
truly understand the numbers in ways that
just weren’t possible before.”
For More Information
Microsoft .NET
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
Microsoft .NET is software that connects
people, information, systems, and devices
through the use of Web services. Web
services are a combination of protocols that
enable computers to work together by
exchanging messages. Web services are
based on the standard protocols of XML,
SOAP, and WSDL, which allow them to
interoperate across platforms and
programming languages.
For more information about Raining Data
products and services, call (949) 442–
4400 or visit the Web site at:
www.rainingdata.com
For more information about groWare
products and services, call (519) 7489199 or visit the Web site at:
www.groware.com
.NET is integrated across Microsoft products
and services, providing the ability to quickly
build, deploy, manage, and use connected,
secure solutions with Web services. These
solutions provide agile business integration
and the promise of information anytime,
anywhere, on any device.
For more information about Microsoft
.NET and Web services, please visit these
Web sites:
www.microsoft.com/net
msdn.microsoft.com/webservices
For more information about SKH
Management Company products and
services, call (717) 626-4771 or visit the
Web site at:
www.skh.com
Software and Services
Microsoft Windows Server System
− Microsoft Windows Server 2003,
Enterprise Edition
− Microsoft SQL Server 2000
 Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2003
 Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
 Technologies
− Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1
− Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting
Services
− Windows Forms

© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Microsoft, Great Plains, Microsoft Dynamics, Visual Basic, Visual
Studio, Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows Server, and
Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or
trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or
other countries. All other trademarks are property of their
respective owners.
Pick, D3 and Reporting Services Connector are registered
trademarks of Raining Data Corporation.
Document published November 2005
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