1. Case Study – Lighting Wholesale

Lightning Wholesale is a mid-to large-size company that works directly with manufacturers to bring sporting goods and equipment to mid to small-sized retailers.  The company is in Southern Ontario, Canada.  Lightning Wholesale acquires the goods, stores them in its warehouses, and distributes them to retailers, who then sell them to sporting enthusiasts across the province.  Suppliers are global, including those from the United States.

Lightning Wholesale is a dynamic office with global networking, communications, customer service, and complex workflows. Lighting Wholesale depends on its office professionals to support staff and management. Office Professional tasks include clerical support, bookkeeping, customer service, data analysis, and document processing.

Lightning Wholesale cares about its employees and retailers.  Where managers can assist their employees, they try to.  Where retailers need guidance, Lightning Wholesales tries to fill this gap as best they can. In working with its small retailers, many of which are owned and operated by sole proprietors, Lightning Wholesale assists the owners with their pricing to help develop promotional pricing plans and the amounts of the payments that can be advertised.  Lightning Wholesale freely offers help since it means more sales and increased profits for the company.

There are currently a few main tasks for Lightning Wholesale management:

• The payroll needs review for the past fiscal year.
• Costs and expenses need forecasting for the next fiscal year.
• Detailed analysis of office supply orders from quarter to quarter with recommendations for the next fiscal year.
• Forklifts need replacing in the warehouse.
• The next round of co-op students needs a computer.
• The employee appreciation event needs planning for next year.
• Travel expenses for the mobile team need to be summarized for the last fiscal year.

With year-end approaching, Lighting Wholesale has many processes they are wrapping up.  It is important that all departments execute their responsibilities as accurately and seamlessly as possible.

Questions

1. The sales team is presenting Q4 results to the management team. The revenues for Q4 were 1,347,201. In the presentation to the team, they would like to round the nearest ten thousand. What is the rounded revenue amount? Why would the management team use a rounded number for the presentation?
2. The budget for office supplies for the product management team is $150 monthly. How much is the budget for 2 quarters (a quarter is 3 months)?
3. Fifteen office professionals are working at Lightning Wholesale. The sales team has 3 office professionals, the marketing team has 1 office professional, the human resources team has 2 office professionals, and finance has 2 office professionals. The rest of the office professionals work in customer service. How many office professionals work in customer service?