Data-Basics to Drive Automated Maintenance for Multi-Chain Hair Salons

Comprising Hair Cuttery, Hair Cuttery UK, Bubbles, ColorWorks, Salon Cielo, easycolor and Salon Plaza, Falls Church, Virginia-based Ratner Companies--the largest privately-owned beauty salon company in the U.S.--has selected Data-Basics' software to automate and streamline its self-performing retail maintenance operations. Data-Basics, a leading provider of Internet-based enterprise applications for the service and facilities management industries, will implement its signature SAM Pro Enterprise solution for Ratner this month.

Unlike most retail companies that outsource facilities maintenance, Ratner is unique in that it conducts all retail maintenance in-house. Providing maintenance for Ratner's 900 salons nationwide, a staff of approximately 26 technicians in 14 states handles everything from monthly preventative maintenance orders to HVAC repairs. Ratner called on Data-Basics to help it eliminate time-consuming manual processes, capture a higher level of work order data, and track technicians more efficiently.

" As there is no central office for our technicians, it was impossible to determine the location of each technician at a given time," said Thomas Kilcourse, director of facilities management, Ratner Companies. "Data-Basics' dispatch board will allow us to tighten our business operations by immediately identifying the location of our technicians and their work status."

SAM Pro's Escalation Manager tool was a crucial component for Ratner. Managers can schedule reports to automatically generate via SAM Pro's ReportAnywhere tool and distributed to specific personnel in a variety of formats. Plus, Escalation Manager can send an e-mail, fax or page to managers or technicians when a preventative maintenance appointment is due or a work order sits too long. Escalation Manager and all other tools are based on Data-Basics' signature Rules-Based Management(TM) (RBM) technology, which enforces rules that have been predetermined by the customer by engaging a series of alarms for action.

" Data-Basics' software is going to change how we do business by making it far more efficient," said Kilcourse. "We're driving a Yugo, but we're about to upgrade to a Mercedes-Benz."

For more information about Data-Basics, please visit www.databasics.com or call 1-800-837-7574