Working Wonders on the Web

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"Every half-hour they're filling this out so we can make sure they're keeping up to our standards," says Jopling. "I used to have three overseas employees at a cost of $100,000 to watch them." The CEO says those savings, together with savings from the reduction in errors, are enough to fund the next stages of the Web initiative. The vendor piece, you see, is just the soup; early next year WFI will complete the nuts--a site to assist the marketing efforts of retailers and installers--of its supply-chain system.

The Web project began in 1999 as a massive brain-dump by Jopling. The former logger's business was poised for expansion, and he needed new staffers to know as much about such exotic species as Tamarind and Patagonian rosewood as he did himself. Ultimately he wrote more than 1,000 pages' worth of content.

Six months later Jopling recruited a CIO, Joel Scholtz, to create a site to house that material, using Microsoft FrontPage (the 2002 version costs $169) and outsourcing hosting to keep down costs. They soon brought the site in-house at a cost of about $75,000, which includes a Web server, an extra T-1 line, and off-the-shelf software for, among other things, online customer-relationship management and a virtual private network.

Simultaneously, the company was migrating to new accounting software, and Jopling hired a technician to build and maintain Web-based windows into that system via a product called Crystal Reports. Now, whenever WFI takes an order, the mill making that product sees an update instantly on the site. The mills also can consult real-time reports of their sales histories, check whether their shipments have arrived, and ensure that WFI's idea of money owed squares with their own. "We're heading toward just-in-time fulfillment, where the suppliers can self-manage our inventory," says Jopling. "If you're doing this the way Wal-Mart does it, the minute something went short it would generate a purchase order on their side. But the investment to do that is huge. Crystal Reports only costs about $4,000."

Suppliers can see aggregate reports of what the distributors are and are not selling and adjust their own production accordingly.

WFI has almost completed a comparable section of its site for "market partners"--flooring distributors holding a specified level of its products. The idea is to allow distributors to track how their inventory stacks up against their agreements with WFI. Distributors can also view how much, say, single-strip maple WFI has in stock, and how much more is on a boat headed for the company's warehouses. That allows them to order what's available or will be soon if they need supplies right away. The distributors can also quickly find answers to any questions about products, thanks to a vast repository of technical data, drawings, photographs, and marketing information that's constantly updated by the fourth member of the IT team. Meanwhile, suppliers can see aggregate reports of what the distributors are and are not selling and can adjust their own production accordingly. Jopling says this yields the whole channel more sales with less inventory, quicker fulfillment, and reduced overstocks.

"We think this will be a big incentive to do significant business with us," says Jopling, who estimates that efficiencies gained online will allow distributors to increase inventory turnover by 20% a year.

Jopling also expects to win over distributors with Web offerings for their customers: retailers and installers who sell the fancy flooring to architects and homeowners. WFI has created yet another subsection of the site with technical and marketing information, as well as inventory data, that those retailers and installers can make a part of their own sites. That way, folks who log on to a retailer's site can see just how much of any given flooring type is available from WFI.

Overall Web strategy and architecture are handled by Scholtz and Jopling, who find the job often spills into evenings and weekends. Aside from Jopling and the IT group, no one else in the company is much involved with the system's planning or operation. "It would get too bogged down," says the CEO.

One more advantage: The Web lets WFI do ever bigger business while remaining physically small. Thanks to the system, the company will need fewer people to answer questions about the status of customer orders; fewer people to support the outside sales staff (who have access to live data on all their accounts); and fewer people to negotiate orders and logistics with far-flung suppliers. "With this we can probably double sales without adding one staff member," says Jopling. "That's the whole game plan."

The Company

Ovation

$30 million in billing; 44 employees

The Site: ClientNet, an extranet for the ad agency's client communication and project management

The Cost: $100,000 to build the site; $5,000 a month for maintenance and improvements

The Team: Ovation's vice president of technical services and two tech employees worked full-time for three months developing ClientNet. Today, the three-person IT staff spends about 10% of its time on the system, with input from top executives and from account managers, who are its principal users.

It's almost 500 miles as the Clydesdale gallops between Ovation in LaCrosse, Wis., and its largest client, Anheuser-Busch Cos. in St. Louis. ClientNet renders that distance meaningless. The extranet--born in 1995 as a place to post photos for client approval--is now a multifeatured edifice of customized workspaces: one for each of Ovation's 11 corporate customers. Virtually everything that passes through an account manager's hands--schedules, research, creative concepts, photos, campaign results--proceeds at once to the site, where customers can submit criticism and ideas. Because Ovation uses digital photography, clients can actually see a photo--as though through a camera lens--being composed and shot, and immediately call or e-mail to ask, for example, that a T-shirt's left sleeve be folded over instead of left flat. And the system will soon deliver Web-based videoconferencing, thus ducking the facelessness rap often leveled at online collaboration.

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Leigh Buchanan

Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture, and she contributes Inc.'s capsule book reviews, "A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books."

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