Woodland Supply Information Systems Project Selection

All figures in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted.

It was early morning November 2, 2020, and Kelly Green, information technology manager, Woodland Supply Inc., was preparing for the important 2021 annual budget meeting with the leadership team in just over two weeks, when he would present his recommendations for information system projects to be approved. It had been a busy year for the information technology (IT) department at Woodland, as many systems and innovations were implemented to allow Woodland Supply to continue operations during the pandemic and to support remote work arrangements for many employees. Green received accolades from the leadership team as the IT department met the heavy demands of COVID-19 by playing a major role in allowing Woodland Supply to operate, innovate, and excel during the pandemic. Information systems (IS) had a direct impact on Woodland’s ability to remain successful, restructure, and ultimately thrive during the pandemic. These IS included e-commerce, business intelligence (BI), cybersecurity, a new call centre, online training platforms, Salesforce marketing automation, sales automation, and strategic Endpoint Central control software deployment. Now, Green had to choose which IS projects to recommend for implementation in 2021 to meet strategic objectives, achieve the most impact, and meet budget constraints. This was a problem for Green, as there were a number of IT projects under consideration that could have a positive impact on the firm’s operations. Green had to decide how to best evaluate the potential IS projects to discern which ones to recommend, and he had to act quickly, as his presentation at the annual budget meeting was fast approaching.

Woodland Supply

Woodland Supply Inc. (Woodland) was a privately held wholesale distribution company founded in 1962 and operated in the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and plumbing industry, which was a $35.16 billion industry in 2019 in Canada, with a growth rate of 9% in 2019.^[1]

The growth in this industry represented an opportunity for Woodland to leverage its extensive industry knowledge capital and experience to expand and meet growing demands. Woodland had 250 non-unionized employees located in nine wholesale branches, three luxury showrooms, and two distribution centres in Southwestern Ontario.

The leadership team’s major strategy for 2021 was collaborative customer service. This strategy was an organization-wide effort inspired by the impact of the pandemic to provide the proper service levels to identified segments of customers to maximize the profitability and long-term health of the company.

Jones, Woodland’s president, approached the pandemic as an opportunity to closely scrutinize business operations and look for ways to improve. the leadership team and all managers were given the mandate to determine ways to “do more with less” and to become more agile to accommodate the constant unknowns that the pandemic presented. Jones’ direction was to leverage technology wherever possible to accomplish this mandate.

“IT solutions are in demand and deemed by leadership to be a key component to the company’s future success.” — Kelly Green 

Woodland was classified as an essential service and was allowed to operate throughout the pandemic. However, the restrictions on the operations due to social distancing and contract tracing required several modifications to business processes. During the initial stages in March 2020, staff were laid off, sales reps could not visit customers, and barriers were installed in all customer product pickup counters. Showroom visits were by appointment only. Office layouts were redesigned to keep employees at requisite distance.

Kelly Green, IT Manager

Green joined Woodland Supply in 2011 as the IT manager. At that time, Woodland had 140 employees and an IT staff of two. By 2020, the company had grown to 250 employees, still supported by the IT staff of two, with major growth in IS infrastructure within the firm. (See Exhibit 1 – Information Systems at Woodland.) The pressure of keeping the IS infrastructure operational while introducing new technologies was becoming increasingly challenging. Demands upon IT were compounded by the president’s mandate to leverage technology to increase the company’s agility and profitability. Green was excited for these opportunities to manage new IS project implementations that were aligned with Woodland’s strategy focused on analyzing existing business processes, optimizing these processes, and improving efficiencies of the firm. He prepared several presentations for the leadership team regarding his vision for the role of the IT department to best serve the firm in meeting these objectives. Green commented,

It is an exciting time for IT at Woodland Supply. IT solutions are in demand and deemed by leadership to be a key component to the company’s future success. It gives us the chance to utilize new current technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, BI, and unified communications. IT at Woodland is so much more than just maintaining networks and supporting end users. We are making a difference! So many opportunities, so little time, as our president often says.

Evaluating New IS Projects for 2021

In preparation for the upcoming annual budget meeting, Green considered a number of factors to analyze the potential IT projects for implementation in 2021.

• alignment with corporate strategic direction by leveraging IS to optimize operations and growth
• projects that are entirely IS-based, not requiring any other business unit to complete
• projects sponsored by another business unit and requiring IS support to complete
• scope of impact to the company in terms of the number of employees benefitted
• maintenance projects that must be completed due to IS lifecycle
• projects that build on existing technology investments
• project’s expected return on investment (ROI)

Green considered the following projects and major initiatives for recommendation in his presentation to the leadership team at the 2021 annual budget meeting.

Potential Projects and Major Initiatives

Additional Internal Resource

Woodland had grown from 160 to 250+ employees with the same two IT staff for support. Was it time to invest in a third IT resource to allow the existing staff to work on more project-based, higher-level planning and proactive activities to help the company move forward? Would a third IT resource to serve the company’s day-to-day support tasks be a good ongoing investment? This was an IT-sponsored initiative. Budget: $45,000 starting salary.

Marketing Automation

This project was originally intended solely for e-commerce. Subsequently, the scope was strategically expanded to include all sales — brick & mortar, as well as e-commerce — to receive additional corporate budget support. Woodland used Mailchimp for email marketing, though Green realized increased sales could have been generated by using a more sophisticated artificial intelligence–based solution. Salesforce was the vendor of choice for this project, given its breadth of product offering, its recent ownership of Tableau, and its widespread integration possibilities. The business sponsor for this project would be an external consultant working for the sales growth department. Budget: $40,000 initial integration costs, $58,000 (US) annually.

Sales Automation

This project focused on taking electronic sales requests via email and automatically entering them into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. This would eliminate the obstacle of some customers having to enter in orders into their internal systems and into Woodland Supply’s e-commerce site. Therefore, similar to the e-commerce implementation, there would be a reduced cost to service customers overall with no change in customer-facing business processes. Conexiom was the vendor for this project. There would be no business sponsor for this project. Budget: $12,000 annually. Projected sales converted to this automation: $4 million+.

Cloud Call Centre

The company’s biggest strategic initiative was collaborative customer care, which centres around providing better service to customers more efficiently. This project involved many business process changes within Woodland. The principal technology proposed was a cloud-based call centre. This would allow customers to be serviced by staff at any location in the company. As such, there was a potential to match more profitable customers with more knowledgeable customer service representatives (CSR). It would also be possible to service all the customer base with fewer CSRs. The vendor of choice was Mitel, who was able to provide a hybrid solution integrating both the existing VoIP on-premise infrastructure with cloud-based customer service agents. The HVAC sales growth manager would be the business sponsor of this project. Budget: $30,000, with $35,000 annual costs.

Central Desktop Management

This project focused on effectively supporting end users by tracking desktop and laptop hardware, and the associated software, using an advanced tool to automate this work. These IT components required more tracking, given the new remote operational business model. The tracking tool Endpoint Central from Manage Engine would be used solely by IT staff to upgrade and patch computers on an ongoing basis from wherever they were. This would be an IT-sponsored project. Budget: $6,000 annually.

Rukkus Wireless Access Point Replacements

The central distribution centres utilized radio frequency scanning units from Rukkus Networks to conduct their work — picking and put away activities, principally. The existing access points would be at end-of-life in the summer of 2021 and needed to be replaced. This was an opportunity to deploy cloud-based serviceable access points. This would be an IT-sponsored project. Budget: $12,000 installation costs, $5,000 annually.

ERP Client Upgrade

The current ERP, Epicor Eclipse, was implemented at Woodland in 1994 with a character-based client called E-Term. A new GUI client named Solar had been released for the Epicor Eclipse ERP software. Woodland paid $120,000 annual maintenance on the ERP application and much of the new, improved functionality was only available in the new Solar GUI client. Woodland had developed a wealth of knowledge in the use of the old character client, and many employees were reluctant to replace it for fear of lost productivity. However, Green was convinced that the new ERP GUI client, Solar, would bring many new opportunities for productivity improvement and functionality to Woodland, if he could convince them to embrace it. There would be no business sponsor for this project. Budget: $83,000 (US) for licenses, and $25,000 for implementation.

Going Forward

Green had to decide which of the IS projects under consideration would best align with Woodland’s strategic objectives to optimize the firm’s business processes and position it for growth. This was a major problem for Green, as the president wanted to leverage IT to achieve key strategic initiatives and there were several projects Green believed would be a good fit to provide a positive impact on the firm’s operations. He wondered which projects would be the most suitable investments for IT’s annual budget constraint of $1.1 million, which included annual IT operation costs such as internet, phone, and software licence fees, as per Exhibit 2 – Annual IT Operating Costs. Green had to determine how to best evaluate the potential IT projects he was considering to maximize the impact of IT in 2021, and he had to act fast, as his presentation at the annual budget meeting to recommend IT’s plan was less than two weeks away.

Exhibits

Exhibit 2 – Annual IT Operation Costs at Woodland Supply Inc.

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References

Simionato, C. (2020, June 8). Sales of electrical, plumbing, heating and air-conditioning equipment and supplies merchant wholesalers in Canada from 2012 to 2021 [Graph]. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/431630/sales-of-electrical-plumbing-heating-and-ac-wholesalers-in-canada/

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How to cite this case: Gravill, J. (2023). Woodland Supply information systems project selection. Open Access Teaching Case Journal, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.58067/pytp-3m92

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