5. Case Study – Lightning 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.

Questions

1. Management would like to analyze the data on dollars spent on employee professional development across the 3 departments – Office Professionals, Customer Service Representatives, and Project Managers. Office Professionals spent $5000, Customer Service Representatives spent $8000, and Project Managers spent $1500.  Express the ratio of dollars spent on professional development in the 3 departments in its lowest terms.
2. Lightning Wholesale is analyzing its Canadian sales by region: 23% of sales were on the West Coast; 18% were in the Prairies, 45% were in central Canada, and 14% were in Atlantic Canada. Express and reduce the ratio of Lightning Wholesale’s respective sales to the smallest term of one. Round to two decimals.
3. The bonus structure for Lightning Wholesale is 2% for Office Professionals, 3% for Customer Service Representatives, and 5% for Project Managers. If the Office Professionals received a bonus of $500, calculate how much Customer Service Representatives and Project Managers receive.
4. Recently, Lightning Wholesale has hired five additional staff. Management would like an estimate on how this will affect the budget for office supplies. Last year for 30 employees, $2,500 was spent on office supplies. What amount will be spent with a total of 35 employees?