| | MAY 202019CIOReviewCREATING INTEGRATED WORKFLOWS FOR AN EVOLVING COMPANYBy Mike Everly, CIO, D&H DistributingD&H Distributing, one of North America's most prominent technology companies, is celebrating its 100th year in business in 2018. In a full century, a company is bound to experience a considerable series of changes that can only be viewed as an evolution. Although growth and success are always positive scenarios, they require a company's internal and technological infrastructure to expand in order to accommodate its transitions.First, some background on how D&H has developed, to illustrate how its technology workflows came into being. D&H is a family-owned organization with its roots in regional distribution. The company has worked to maintain its personalized focus on service, despite its growth across two countries. It's an international enterprise with a home-town mentality.In the mid-80s, D&H changed its business model to become a national distributor, and it expanded further north into Canada in 2007. Before transitioning from regional to national status, however, the only way to grow was for its sales team to work closely with technology dealers in a limited selection of territories, and help increase business for each individual customer within that geography. It was a hands-on strategy focusing on relationships--an ideology that pre-dated CRM packages, back-office systems, and even computers themselves.As CIO, it's been my team's challenge to take this very effective, relationship-based, "high-touch" business model and apply it to an infrastructure that spans a widely distributed enterprise, one that is approaching $4 billion in revenues, with close to 1,200 employees and seven warehouses.As with any company, D&H has what we call "islands of organization" within its internal structure. Its individual departments include IT, sales, finance, marketing, buying, logistics and HR. The enterprise has grown, incorporating a greater volume of personnel within broadly-affixed infrastructureCIO INSIGHTS
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