The Sports Authority.

After a series of mergers and acquisitions, The Sports Authority has grown into the largest national sporting goods big box company in the country. With approximately 400 stores and pro-forma revenues of about two and a half billion dollars, the company had a significant need for bringing the networks and systems from component organizations together quickly. "An acquisition is only as good as the speed that you can make it happen. If it drags out, you lose all the synergies that are necessary to make it a viable alternative for growth," said June Shirai, senior vice president and chief information officer for Sports Authority.

Sports Authority sought a platform that was robust and operated well in a remote environment. After considering several systems, they chose Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and called on the expertise of Interlink to help them implement it. "It was a win-win for everybody. We were able to implement this very quickly without impacting our stores or distribution systems," said Shirai.

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Sports Authority and Interlink were able to complete the Exchange roll out in five weeks. "I am sure a lot of people said there is no way you are going to be able to do that. We had a great partner in Microsoft. We had a great partner Interlink to make this happen," said Shirai.

Sports Authority plans to incorporate other Microsoft tools to offer better communication to their field and encourage more collaboration. Their partnership with Interlink will assist them in implementing the technologies that will lead to higher productivity and profitability.

"The partnership with Microsoft and Interlink was so key to us. We could tell that this is a team that was really interested in making us successful," said Shirai.

JUNE SHIRAI, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER