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At House-Hasson Hardware’s June dealer market, the company will explore the company’s present – and future – technological advancements to help them be more profitable and efficient.
These include e-mail via the “cloud”; virtualized computer systems, “Go Green” paperless warehouse operations; increasing warehouse bandwidth by a factor of 10; and other steps to ensure dealers have advanced technology serving them, says Don Hasson, president of House-Hasson Hardware.
“This is all about our dealers’ profitability,” Hasson says. “We’re looking forward to demonstrating to dealers what we’ve put in place to help them meet their individual profitability goals.
“We talk to dealers, ask them questions, and we put ourselves in their place to consider what we’d need and want to help our hardware store or lumberyard run well,” Hasson says. “That combination is leading to exciting technological developments.”
Hasson says technology enables dealers to communicate with their customers in a 21st Century fashion, and if customers find it easy to do business at a hardware store or lumberyard they’re more likely to be loyal customers.
“Also, technology brings younger customers into dealers’ stores, and that’s where the future is for our industry,” he says.
Ron Yatteau, House-Hasson online services director, will lead the technology seminar at 3 p.m. on Thursday, June 19.
“By the end of the year we hope to completely discontinue analog ordering devices such as modems, faxes, phase-out of our CD Catalog, and move exclusively to these newer technologies,” Yatteau said.
Yatteau outlined some of the electronic upgrade advantages.
“Everything is in real time; it’s faster, more available and easier to use,” he says.
Yatteau says the bandwidth increase and a conversion to a fiber network (as opposed to copper wire computer connections) speeds compiling of dealers’ orders in House-Hasson’s warehouses in Knoxville, Tenn., and Prichard, W. VA., which total 750,000 square feet.
“Increasing bandwidth and moving to a fiber ‘backbone’ in the warehouses is like adding more lanes to an interstate highway,” Yatteau explained. “Ordering and picking traffic will flow more smoothly at higher speeds.
“We’re also upgrading many of our IT -n-house servers. As technology changes it’s important to keep systems current to take advantages of new services, speed critical functions, and expand enterprise security,” Yatteau added. Among other seminar topics: a demonstration of House-Hasson’s new assortment program, pricing tools, and the company’s news blog.
“There will also be a workshop for dealers on how to customize their websites, the best ways to market their websites to their communities, and use of a touch-screen kiosk dealers can put in their stores,” Yatteau added.
House-Hasson serves more than 2,000 dealers in 17 states and the Caribbean. The company’s website is www.househasson.com.
