RMS HeadQuarters (HQ) System Requirements

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.

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, Windows 2003 Server. 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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