http://www.insystek.com

Topeka, Kansas - The Gambrinus Company is best known as importer of Corona Extra, the number one selling imported beer in the United States and seventh largest selling beer in the world. Gambrinus imports Moosehead Lager from Canada, owns the BridgePort Brewery (Portland, Oregon) the Spoetzl Brewery (Shiner, Texas) and owns and brews the PeteÂ’s Wicked brand family. The Gambrinus Company includes more than 300 corporate, sales, distribution, brewing and support personnel, and markets 5 brand portfolios throughout the United States and Caribbean.

Product Search

“We used a very expensive software/hardware tracking program for almost two years. Though it provided good information, it was very difficult to manage and required a client on each PC to obtain the scans.” explains Rick Boynton, Help Desk Supervisor for The Gambrinus Company and the person tasked with managing over 40 servers, 300+ users and 10 remote offices around the country. “We were extremely frustrated when the newer version of the software was released. Not only did the new version not provide any additional scanned data, but it actually provided less!”

Boynton began a search for a product that provided the information crucial to their operation, that was customizable, yet powerful enough to not require a client on each remote PC. “We spent many months meticulously evaluating over a dozen products, but always found something with the application that was a ‘show stopper’. Some products had a pretty front-end, but lacked the true power in data returned by each scan. Other products had a software scanner (using a client) but were more of an afterthought, merely tacked onto an overall management or Help Desk application. As an IT shop, our goal was good, solid data that we can use as opposed to a pretty interface.”

Leveraging Limited Resources

With their limited IT staff resources, Boynton had determined the best way to essentially “multiply” staff was to locate and secure a product providing granular information on PC’s and servers across the company. Not only should such a product capture basic system information, but it should also be customizable to quickly and accurately obtain required information to satisfy a short-notice project. “When we found the INSYSTEK® Inventory Manager, we were ecstatic! This product not only collected tons of information that we were able to use immediately, but it also allowed us to customize the scan to gather “special purpose” information from the registry. A real plus for us was the simple user interface which made it easy to see information on a particular system. We really liked the ability to schedule a scan, or simply scan a particular system on demand. After a thorough evaluation of the product, we purchased it and have never looked back.”

The Big Picture

The INSYSTEK® Inventory Manager provides The Gambrinus Company with the ability to access their scanned information using Microsoft Access. “We had already developed an extensive Access application which tracked issued equipment.” said Boynton, “One of the key fields in this Access application is the PC name, so it was simple feat to associate these tables with the PC name that the Inventory Manager application also used. Suddenly, we not only had a very complete picture of what hardware our users were assigned, but also the detailed, up-to-date conditions and software on each system. Virtually overnight, the blinders had been removed and we saw the ‘big picture’. We now had the facts to make recommendations to management about the ‘real world’ conditions our people were working in.”

Return on Investment

When an end-user system arrives in their IT department for a software reload/update, The Gambrinus Company IT staff run a report providing many key pieces of information about the system obtained from the latest scan. “At a glance, it is a simple task to not only verify the hardware settings of the system, but also all the critical settings that the user had prior to returning the unit.” details Boynton. “After the reload, we are able to return the system with all the mapped drives/printers, special software and ODBC entries restored. This has proven invaluable to the productivity of our people with minimum calls back to our Help Desk for setup support. Previously, we had to log into the system as the user (if we could) before the reload, and manually annotate each installed printer, mapped drive, software, and the like. The very modest price of the INSYSTEK® Inventory Manager has paid for itself many times over in just the time saved when doing system reloads.”

“We often mention to each other that we could not provide the level of support that we do without INSYSTEK® Inventory Manager. In our opinion, this product is a ‘must buy’ for every IT department.”

About INSYSTEK

INSYSTEK, Inc. has established itself as a leader in Agentless™ IT management software, supplying solutions that enable system auditing/inventorying, software distribution/removal, and server performance & availability monitoring capabilities to clients in business, government, education and healthcare in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and South Africa.

More information on INSYSTEK and the full range of INSYSTEK Agentless™ IT management solutions, including free trial versions, can be found at www.insystek.com or by sending an e-mail to info@insystek.com or calling toll free 1-877-467-9783.