SEQUEL Helps The Hammock Source Redefine Relaxation

Remember 1971? Well, that turned out to be a big year for people that like to relax. That’s the year an eastern North Carolina tobacco salesman, part-time inventor, and avid woodworker named Walter Perkins Jr. founded Hatteras Hammocks. He’d crafted some hand-made hammocks for his friends and they soon were asking for more. So many more that, by 1987, Hatteras Hammocks had blossomed into the world’s top hammock producer. A decade later, Hatteras Hammocks, Inc. started doing business as The Hammock Source, now the world’s largest manufacturer and seller of hammocks. As they so aptly describe it, “We’re more than the source for quality hammocks—think of us as your source for relaxation, redefined.”

Max Valdman is the IT Manager at The Hammock Source. As he describes it, “We’re a consumer leisure goods company. Besides hammocks, stands, and accessories, we also sell outdoor furniture and outdoor rugs, including a line of items we call Real Deal Brazil. Real Deal Brazil is hats and bags made out of recycled truck tarps from Brazil—the Real Deal Brazil. We use old truck tarps from trucks that were driving up and down the Amazon and we thoroughly clean them and make hats and bags out of the material—each handmade and unique. It’s really cool.”

The Hammock Source is a relatively small company with a five-person IT department. But, it’s a full-service IT department that supports accounting, operations, and business intelligence software; in-house management operations; their supply chain; retail Web sites; and both business-to-consumer and business-to-business communications, including e-mail. Each person does a lot in different areas. So, even though Max’s main background is application development, he’s responsible for IT operations and day-to-day reporting.

As Max explains, “We use an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution from HarrisData that we’ve customized a lot. Reporting is difficult for any software package because each company runs its business its own way. It’s tough for a software vendor to produce a report system for all the varied needs. We have a data warehouse system that we use to extract information from operational data into files for display and reporting. Once a day, we perform an Extract Transform Load (ETL) process to extract information from the database, transform it into usable data, and load it into online displays.

“Before, my presentation tools were RPG and physical reports, and I was looking for something faster and more intuitive for end users. I heard about SEQUEL™ from SEQUEL Software, so I trialed it and learned what it can do—how easy it is to pull data from DB2 files and make information available to end users. During the trial period, we built a few prototype reports. And, when I gave my executive team a demo, they were sold on the spot.”

“What I really like about SEQUEL is that it lets people help themselves... our users can customize their reports.” – Max Valdman, IT Manager

Max is also sold on SEQUEL and the flexibility if offers for reporting. “What I really like about SEQUEL is that it lets people help themselves. Now, we use prompted views and drill-down objects every day. That’s really great because our users can customize their reports. One issue with canned reports is that people always ask for specific reports with information they only need once, or they need weekly or monthly, but with slightly different information each time. Using a combination of prompted views and drill-down displays lets our users handle 90% of these situations.

“In SEQUEL, drill-down means taking a summarized set of data and ‘drilling’ into the detail behind it. A user starts with a date, category, customer type, or some combination. Then, they can do a global view by category. If they spot an issue and want to learn more, they can drill down to the account level, item level, or order level. For example, they can present information by customer type. Then, they drill-down within customer type to see all of the customers in that type. Or, they can open all of the items sold to the customer. Or, they can go another way— start with an item and see all the customers who purchased it. SEQUEL is very flexible.”

Max and his users like the way SEQUEL lets them slice and dice their data. “My philosophy is to give people the tools and information they need to find what they’re looking for so they can help themselves. Productivity is a big gain with SEQUEL. You can modify a sample report in so many different ways that it’s kind of like building with blocks—one builds on another. And, you can easily modify queries to look at the data from different angles.”

 Max really likes SEQUEL’s display options. “I like dashboards. Among other things, they’re a convenient, easy way to group reports. Sometimes, people can forget about which reports they have. When you give them a dashboard as a single spot from which to display different views and reports, it really helps them remember what’s available. Plus, with SEQUEL, they can load their reports into Excel if they need to.

 “Now, our users do most of their searching in SEQUEL Viewpoint, so it really is ‘on demand.’ And, SEQUEL helps us save money and stay green because we’re not printing reports—we’re doing almost everything online. We also use SEQUEL’s interface to Google Maps to provide a clear picture of where we sell products. It really shows us where our customers are located.”

 Finally, Max enjoys the level of support that SEQUEL offers. “When I call SEQUEL Support, usually it’s user error—my error. Either I’m not doing something right, or I didn’t choose something I should have. Typically, they gently explain what to do and I move on. That’s great support.”

 So, with SEQUEL on the job offering customized, ‘on demand’ reporting; drill-down searching; dashboard displays; and global mapping, The Hammock Source can produce higher quality products faster and more efficiently. And, that means that everyone gets to spend more time redefining relaxation.