CHAPTER 1

BUSINESS CASE: INTERTEX

CORPORATION

International Textile Group, LTD, known as InterTex, is a conglomerate of businesses

headquartered in Hanahan, South Carolina, a suburb of a larger city. The corporation
is privately held with most of the company owned by one individual.
InterTex owns a number of different manufacturing plants throughout the
world. These plants are located as close as North Charleston, South Carolina, which
is practically across the street. Other plants are located in such places as Reno,
Nevada; Austin, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Boise, Idaho; Ontario, Canada; Bonn, Ger-
many; and many other locations. These plants manufacture items as diverse as cloth-
ing, golf balls, industrial supplies, and desk pads, which are but a few of the many
items they produce. Their products are sold through normal distribution chains,
which normally begin with a wholesaler who handles a particular divisions entire
product line.
There are approximately thirty people at the headquarters location. Their main
functions are executive, financial, and legal, including their support staff. The head-
quarters personnel contact the divisions as needed usually by telephone or fax. All
financials are faxed once a month to the headquarters location from each division
with a backup copy sent via mail.
The staff at headquarters complete their daily tasks using Apple Macintoshes,
which are networked using AppleTalk. Each of the Macs utilize a docking station so
that the employees can travel with their particular computer or take it home and
telecommute to the company headquarters. Because of the vast amount of travel,
normally you will not find more than ten people in the office at any one time.
Recently, InterTex purchased a local screen-printing company, Port Printing
International. Port Printing specializes in creating specialty logos and placing them
on promotional products for distribution by other companies. Many of these prod-
ucts over the years have been produced by one of the manufacturing plants owned
by InterTex.
Port Printing’s marketing has primarily utilized four different methods:

1. Direct salespeople in very large metropolitan areas

2. Brokers in smaller metropolitan areas
3. A very small telemarketing group primarily responsible for managing exist-
ing accounts
4. A small catalog displaying some of the goods with logos that have been
produced

Their customers have included such diverse groups as a small Chamber of Com-
merce, a local garden club, the PGA golf tournament, and a worldwide shipping
2 Chapter One/Business Case: InterTex Corporation

company. The company has grown since its creation from five people to fifty current
employees. The basic paper process currently handles all orders.
The InterTex plan for Port Printing is to develop a call center to handle the sale of
products from their other subsidiaries. This will require substantial planning as well
as data processing and communications resources that they currently don’t have.
Based on current estimates, the call center alone will have over 300 employees with
support personnel. There are no plans to add additional employees at the corporate
headquarters. Port Printing will eventually have to provide daily reports to corpo-
rate headquarters as well as be able to provide orders to the subsidiaries.

BUSINESS CASE STUDY QUESTIONS

Based on the topics discussed in Chapter 1, answer the following questions.

Business

1. How are products currently sold?

2. Why was Port Printing purchased?

Application

1. What is the current Network Operating System used at the headquarters

location?

Data

1. What types of information are currently transferred between headquarters

and the various divisions?
2. What type of data will Port Printing have to provide to headquarters and to
other divisions?

Network

1. What general networking technologies are currently being used?

Technology

1. What specific technologies are used to deliver the information?