Company Background
For over 30 years, Pioneer Business Systems has been providing McDonald’s franchisees with general accounting systems to automate business operations for over 550 restaurants across the US, most recently by using innovative scanning and CTERA’s hybrid cloud storage solutions solution to enable more efficient operations.
The Challenge
McDonald’s restaurant franchisees, such as E.K. Management Company, LLC with 11 stores in New Hampshire, are overwhelmed with expanding dependence on physical documents. With each food service delivery, inventory report, or payroll run, filing requirements grow and physical storage space needs mount. Along with the inefficiencies of filing paper, this results in substantially increased costs.
In 2011, Jim DAlessandro set out to enhance his Bottom Line accounting system with an imaging solution integrated with hybrid on-site/cloud storage technology to enable a paperless office, reduce operational costs, and ensure end-to-end data protection.
“I needed reliable, integrated on-site and cloud backup with multi-tenant remote management, as any loss of digital images would be devastating to my business and to my customers,” said DAlessandro.
CTERA is a perfect fit for my customers with its easy on-site installation, secure cloud storage, and remote monitoring that allows me ensure that customer data is always protected.
Jim DAlessandro, President and CEO, Pioneer Business Systems
The CTERA Solution
Compact and cost-effective CTERA C200 appliances were installed at Pioneer Business System’s customer sites, such as E.K. Management, replacing traditional filing cabinets once lining office walls. Integrated with CTERA’s managed agents for server backup, each appliance acts as a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, containing two mirrored 3TB hard drives for redundancy. From the Bottom Line accounting system, documents are scanned and their images are stored on a CTERA C200 appliance.
The appliance automatically backs up the local data to cloud infrastructure hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The data is moved over a 128-bit SSL connection, with private key AES-256 encryption for end-to-end data protection. In addition to robust data security, Pioneer Business Systems selected CTERA over other solutions because of its wide range of cost-effective appliance sizes, and easy, portal-based access and management.
Using CTERA Portal, DAlessandro centrally manages all customer appliances from a unified web console. “CTERA’s admin tool is easy to use and lets me actively monitor customer storage so I can ensure it is protected,” says DAlessandro. “And if there’s ever a storage issue, I receive an automated email alert, which can really minimize recovery time.” For Pioneer Business Systems customers, costs are eliminated as dependence on physical documents and office area needs decrease. Preconfigured CTERA appliances are easily installed on-site and automatically connect to Pioneer Business System’s integrated cloud service.
In addition to cost reduction, McDonald’s franchisees are now rethinking the way they operate. While on-site and cloud storage is largely invisible, operational efficiencies gained are impressive.”Using CTERA’s secure and redundant backup and recovery solution, I’m confident my business records will always be available. As a result, I’ve significantly reduced physical storage and eliminated hours of work a week,” says Emile Haddad, President, E.K. Management.