Wholesaler Mobilizes IBM i App with Help from Profound Logic

Dayton, OH, September 27, 2012 --(PR.com)-- WinWholesale is a collection of wholesale distributors of plumbing and heating supplies, including pipes, valves, fittings, pumps, refrigeration, and air conditioning equipment. The Dayton, Ohio-based company has equity stakes in 470 companies displaying the "Win" prefix and another 70 under Noland Company.

The company developed and runs its own IBM i-based ERP system. The system, called the Wholesalers Information Services Executive (or WISE), lets employees enter and manage customer data, sales quotes, order history and more.

WISE has served the company well, but its 5250 interface needed an update. "Our employees would ask us why we were still using old green-screen applications in the year 2012," states Rick Welage, director of IT applications for WinWholesale. "It made us look out of touch with new technologies, which is not the impression we wanted to give our customers."

The ideal solution would not only update the look and feel of the application's interface, but also mobile-enable the solution to give users the ability to access it from anywhere. "We looked at a few solutions that claimed to do what we were looking for, but they didn't offer the right combination of tools, services and support we knew we needed with this project," Welage says.

Then WinWholesale took a look at the Genie RPG application modernization tool from Profound Logic. Genie is an on-the-fly converter that generates HTML interfaces from the 5250 data, and it can also be used to "mobile-enable" 5250 screens so they can be displayed on iPads and other devices.

Genie fit WinWholesale's requirements, and soon the companies were working together to develop custom iPad screens for WISE users. The custom development was necessary to make WISE fully functional on the iPad, including support for the iPad's touch screen, and support for WISE's special function keys and searchable fields.

By this summer, the new iPad WISE interface was being used by more than 200 WinWhole employees. Being able to access the familiar looking WISE screens from an iPad has enabled employees to answer questions and fulfill quotes while in the field and at customers' sites.

The combination of the Genie technology, the low price point, and the willingness by Profound to help made the project a success for WinWholesale, Welage says.

Read the full case study at: http://bit.ly/SwgApr

About WinWholesale, Inc.
WinWholesale Inc. (www.winwholesale.com) is a leading supplier of domestic and industrial supplies and materials headquartered in Dayton, Ohio. The privately-held company consists of more than 450 wholesaling corporations in which WinWholesale is an equity partner, and also Noland Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary. Noland is a wholesaler with nearly 70 locations mainly in the Southeast. Collectively, WinWholesale is referred to as “The Win Group of Companies.” In the group are companies conducting business-to-business wholesale distribution of plumbing and heating supplies; industrial pipes, valves and fittings; heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration equipment; electrical equipment; industrial and commercial fastening hardware; waterworks and utility supplies; domestic, commercial and industrial pumps, and irrigation and landscape supplies.

About Profound Logic Software, Inc.
Profound Logic Software, an advanced IBM business partner, provides best-of-breed solutions to support the development and modernization of applications on IBM i. Over the last 10 years they have facilitated the modernization of many million lines of RPG code for thousands of customers, including Nintendo, Pepsi and General Electric. They continue to innovate today with products such as Genie, RPGsp, Atrium, iData, RPG-Alive and Profound UI. Visit www.profoundlogic.com to learn more.