DTM for iSeries Customer: Cabela's

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How Cabela's Successfully Migrated Its Large OV/400 Applications To DTM for iSeries

Cabela's is known as the "World's Foremost Outfitter" and is committed to providing quality products, value and service to outdoorsmen and women all over the world. With its many retail stores and boat shop locations based in the United States, the company currently has a staff of over 5,000 people.

This outfitter utilized IBM's OfficeVision product extensively as a green screen word processing application. OV/400 FillForm and MergeLetter functionalities were embedded and used heavily in interactive applications by many users throughout the company to collect customized item information, create individual merge letters and send out huge merge letter batch runs.

Discovering DTM for iSeries' functionality at COMMON

In search of a worthy successor of IBM's OV/400 product, Cabela's researched various migration solutions. Most alternatives were only evaluated briefly and did not qualify, because they did not provide adequate conversion features, they did not have any type of user interface or the supported functionality was too limited to meet Cabela's requirements.

One day Cabela's ended up on Inventive Designers' website and learned about DTM for iSeries. Eager to discover more about migrating away from OV/400, they visited ID's booth at COMMON. Getting acquainted with some of the Inventive Designers' DTM for iSeries and migration specialists, they came away with specific details and a better understanding of their migration project as well as valuable information on the tbody/Text Merge technology and how it could minimize their migration efforts.

DTM for iSeries enhanced with SpellCheck and FillForm functionality

The initial reason Cabela's chose DTM for iSeries was the similarity to the old OfficeVision product, thus eliminating user training on the new technology. The ability to save documents within the IFS in directories rather than shared folders was also an advantage. Another plus was the MS Word User Interface, which enables them to combine the powerful tbody/Text Merge functions of DTM for iSeries with the popular MS Word wordprocessor.

Eventually the DTM for iSeries 5250 editor included the SpellChecking and FillForm functionality similar to that of OV/400. FillForm (a special function which allows a user to complete a pre-defined form document by means of a special fill form editor) was a fundamental requirement and consideration in Cabela's migration project. Both features were incorporated by Inventive Designers' development staff in time for their conversion and migration schedule.

Structured conversion in "waves"

The migration and implementation was performed in "waves" over the course of three weekends. Documents in predetermined folders were converted in a controlled manner, so users could be reoriented prior to the conversion and efficiently support could be provided post-conversion. Along the way a few technical issues were encountered, but with any large conversion effort, the conversion of hundreds of thousands of documents will yield some anomalies. Thanks to the excellent cooperation between both companies, Cabela's and Inventive Designers managed to clear these obstacles.

"The support and development staff at Inventive Designers was very responsive to our needs. Key individuals from Cabela's and Inventive Designers worked through each issue in a professionial and competent manner until it was resolved" , mentioned Cabela's MIS Project Leader Georgia Butterfield.

DTM for iSeries holds promise for future enhancements and upgrades

DTM for iSeries has been fully operational at Cabela's corporate headquarters since April 2002 and they are very satisfied with the software and the added functionality. The MS Word User Interface is still being introduced and holds great promise for future enhancements and upgrades throughout their organization. Whatever Cabela's plans for the future are, Inventive Designers will continue to support and assist them as a valued technology partner.

"The response from the ID support and development staff was commendable. We've forged a mutually beneficial business relationship" , stated Georgia Butterfield.

Contact information

Mrs. Georgia Butterfield
MIS Project Leader
Georgia.Butterfield(at)cabelas(dot)com
(308)-255-1718