Case Studies

Assistance League® Of Los Altos Costume Bank™ - Los Altos, Calif.

Solutions By Computer has a tradition of taking on even the most non-standard rental businesses. So when The Costume Bank of Los Altos, Calif., (a non-profit organization) selected Enfinity from afield of over 20 competing rental software packages, Solutions decided it was up for yet another challenge of meeting the specific requirements of a rental business with its own set of constraints.

The Costume Bank is run by the Assistance League of Los Altos. It is staffed entirely by volunteers,and all net proceeds generated by the organization are directed to just a few select charities. The principal charity is a subsidized apartment complex that is made available to Stanford University Medical Center patients and their families who are in serious need of assistance. The other charities provide assistance to children in need of critical school supplies, help to needy families, and support for single teenage women with children struggling to establish themselves.

Rose Rambo is The Costume Bank’s volunteer System Administrator. She has been working with Enfinity for a little over a year now, transforming a rental operation that previously had been paper-based.

"Solutions has enabled us to take our inventory management and customer service quality up several notches, allowing us to devote more time to serving customers. Checking in is faster; checking out is faster. That’s been one of the biggest quantitative changes: how much faster the overall process has become," Rose says. "The more costumes we can move, the more net proceeds get channeled to our charities.

"The costume rental business has some complexities of its own," Rose adds."One of these is managing complex combinations of items in various costumes. Enfinity’s powerful inventory management capability has enabled us to really make this work, reducing lost items and enhancing our productivity.

"Costume combinations and protection of our assets is very important to us. The Costume Bank does not use mass-produced costumes. All of our costumes are originals, obtained selectively from donations and often painstakingly sewn together by volunteers. So, you can imagine, improving our inventory management to make the most of our uniqueness was really important to us."

When asked what other Enfinity benefits have accrued to The Costume Bank, Rose points out that access to more data has been increasingly helpful in analysis and planning. "Before Enfinity, we never had the kind of data we are getting now, but even so we feel like we are just scratching the surface. We are working with Solutions to go deeper into mining information out of our data.

"Another benefit of automating with Enfinity," Rose notes, "is that it raised the level of professionalism and service in our organization. Increasingly, we’ve become less of a small, homey fundraising group and are perceived more as a real service organization with differentiated offerings.

"We see the implementation of Enfinity here as a work in progress and a labor of love. We know that we are one of Solution’s smaller customers, and one with a very unique profile. Our contacts with the Solutions staff have demonstrated their affability and helpful attitude. While Solutions’ delivery and service processes are perhaps geared to larger and more resourceful organizations, they also work for us," Rose concludes. "We are definitely making major progress, and we have the sense that Solutions is the kind of company that will ultimately support us in achieving our goals."

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