For over 50 years, Color Film Corporation, headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, has had a remarkable track record of success that reflects the company's ability to adapt to change and be responsive to the needs of the marketplace. After World War II, Color Film was an early pioneer in developing audio-visual filmstrips for schools. They were also one of the first to recognize the impact of video in the early 80s and, when CD-ROM technology began to emerge in the 90s, Color Film was on top of that trend as well. Today, they handle duplication of film, video and digital media for corporations in virtually every industry.

The move into digital media was a major success for Color Film -- their business doubled in the first 18 months -- but it also catapulted the company into a competitive marketplace unlike anything they had experienced. As Aldon Lareau, president of Color Film's Digital Media Division and the company's chief technology officer, explains, "In our market, you can't build a better mousetrap than the competition -- winning and keeping customers depends on providing better customer service, which means things like faster turnaround and error-free production."

In Lareau's mind, the key to providing better service than the competition was having more productive information technology systems. "People always talk about information technology being a competitive advantage -- we really needed to make that a reality. We had a UNIX based proprietary system for order entry that was adapted from a system developed for auto parts stores. It was a wonderful system but it was definitely aging.

One of Applied Software Technologies 's first recommendations was to rebuild Color Film's mission critical new order processing system. The fully integrated system included order entry and tracking, real time production status, inventory, and contact management. Microsoft SQL Server was chosen to ensure the needed performance (about 30 people use the system simultaneously), robustness, scalability, and security. After the initial pilot stage, a web based quotation system was added along with integration to shipping (UPS) and Color Films Great Plains financial system.

Applied Software Technologies also took a hard look at the way Color Film's remote locations were set up using WinFrame. The company was struggling to maintain separate (and often unreliable) networks and Exchange servers in their remote sites in Boston and Washington, D.C. In fact, people at the remote sites were inadvertently altering server configurations that would cause problems for days or weeks. Applied Software Technologies began reengineering Color Film's infrastructure by collapsing the Boston and Washington networks with one robust Exchange server in Norwalk, Connecticut that everyone could dial into, and that Color Film could centrally control and manage. Applied Software also MS Exchange and added more disk space and faster processors, which dramatically improved the performance of the system for remote access." Connectivity to the Washington, D.C. office is made via a virtual private network (VPN), while the Boston office is liked via WinFrame.