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You need stable chain-wide
views of far-flung inventories to wisely balance purchasing.
You must manage central and distributed purchasing. You
need to see customers' records, no matter where or how
they shop in your enterprise. And you need to selectively
control pricing, discounts and ordering in specific stores,
regions or globally. You need enterprise-wide data entry
of new items, deletions of old SKUs to be done once, in
one spot, and take effect exactly where you dictate.
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Listed below youll find the minimum system requirements
for HQ that will yield a functional level of performance.
Higher levels of performance can be gained with hardware
upgrades.
At Each Store
Each store must be running Microsoft Retail Management
System Store Operations software and able to connect
to HQ via either a dial-up modem, the Internet, VPN,
ISDN or WAN. You will need to install the HQ Remote
Client program at each store. HQ Remote Client can run
on the same computer as Store Operations. Typically
the back office computer, equipped with a modem for
communications to the head office, is used.
At the Head Office
HeadQuarters is designed to run on any PC-compatible
system under Microsoft Windows® 98/Me/XP, Windows
NT 4.0 SP5, or Windows 2000. At the head office, you
will need to install the HQ Communications Server program
on a computer equipped with the proper communications
gear (modem, the Internet, VPN, ISDN, WAN, etc.) to
receive data from stores.
Very small chains can run Microsoft SQL Server™,
HQ Communications Server and HQ Manager programs on
a single PC though performance may not be optimum. At
minimum, a Pentium 300-MHz computer with 256MB of RAM
and 8GB of hard drive is required. A faster CPU and
more RAM will significantly increase the performance.
The MSDE version of SQL Server is provided with HQ
so retailers can start with a robust database engine
even on desktop PCs. MSDE limits the size of the HQ
database to a maximum of 2GB. As your needs grow, you
can add additional PCs and upgrade to Microsoft SQL
Server for increased storage and better performance.
Larger chains may elect to run SQL Server, HQ Communication
Server and HQ Manager program on dedicated computers
for best performance and availability. Multiple computers
running the HQ Communications Server program can be
used to distribute the communication load or provide
backup.
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