Winter Gear Distributors, WGD for short, is one of FastFit’s main suppliers. They are a distributor of winter sports equipment and apparel, everything from the latest cross country skies to winter clothing that you could wear to the North Pole if needed. WGD has over four hundred (400) customers, deals with about forty-five (45) different manufacturers and processes an average of two hundred (200) orders a day. While their products are state of the art, their information systems are out of date. As part of the work on this business case, the reader will need to consider the upgrade or replacement of old WGD legacy systems by an integrated enterprise-wide system for both transacting and management control that will also improve the firm’s customer responsiveness, strengthen their bottom line, and even address their emerging competitors who are operationally far more efficient than WGD.

WGD has been in business for thirty (30) years and like many similar businesses it has three operating departments, namely: sales, operations and accounting. The Sales Department deals directly with their customers, including FastFit. Sales personnel take orders over the phone and manually complete paper order forms. They later confirm with the customer each order and its delivery date. The Sales team is responsible for generating sales and revenues, understanding customer needs, and providing a high level of customer service. The Operations Department commits to delivery dates for orders through Sales, fills and ships customer orders, manages the inventory, and orders products from WGD suppliers, who are manufacturers of sports equipment and apparel. The major goal of Operations is to fill orders quickly, accurately and cheaply. Finally the Accounting Department reviews and approves all orders as submitted by Sales, issues invoices, and insures that customers pay for goods