UCS CDAP

UCS's Digital Adoption Plan helps it achieve more significant profit margins using its Zoho One configuration.

Client

Upper Canada Stretchers (UCS) is in the art supply sector, manufacturing and supplying stretcher frames, art panels and products supporting frame construction across North America.

Brief

UCS applied to the Boost Your Business Technology Grant from the Canada Digital Adoption Program (CDAP) for an opportunity to receive the following: 

1. A grant of up to $15,000 covering 90% of the costs for a digital adoption plan developed by a registered digital advisor (me);

2. Up to $100,000 in interest-free loans from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to help implement their digital adoption plan;

3. Up to $7,300 in wage subsidies to hire a student or recent graduate to help execute its digital adoption plan.

Challenge

USC's supply costs have fluctuated and become more volatile since the pandemic, with its material costs varying by as much as 10% - 15% from receiving a customer order to completing projects and invoicing, which makes profitability challenging to predict.

UCS provides high-quality products at reasonable rates in a niche market. Given the sizable volume of custom projects, it can often increase prices with little pushback from clients.

UCS implements price changes as a percentage increase across all products and services; however, it wants to develop a more exact pricing approach which accounts for all costs incurred (for example, materials, labour, sales and marketing).

Its high volume of small orders presents difficulties for staff to manage efficiently, and its production manager is concerned that the team doesn't follow a consistent process.

UCS recently licensed Zoho One, and as it begins to roll out Zoho across its organization, it hopes to achieve numerous departmental goals, ultimately allowing it to attain higher and more predictable profit margins.

UCS wants to use the CDAP to learn how Zoho One can digitize its business processes (Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Order Management, Shipping, Production, Inventory, and Accounting) to handle increased sales volume and profit margins without requiring additional staff. 

Strategy

UCS knew it needed to digitize its business to handle increased sales volume while improving its profit margins. In preparation for its CDAP Digital Adoption Plan, it drafted almost fifty business goals it hoped to achieve across its service areas.

UCS's Digital Adoption Plan illustrates how to achieve UCS's goals using specific Zoho applications, including a summary table of recommended applications. 

Following the plan will result in more accurate and transparent costs, visually accessible to essential staff across the organization through cloud-based dashboards. UCS will apply more targeted price increases, testing for price sensitivity and ensuring it maintains its loyal customer base while capturing deserved profits. 

UCS's digital systems will encourage the consistent capture of pertinent project details shared by customers early during project discovery, becoming accessible to essential staff throughout, resulting in quicker and more accurate project completion times and costs.

Completing the plan will allow UCS management to gain control over their profit margins, helping them achieve more consistent growth.

Results

UCS' digital adoption plan identified over forty Zoho applications to address each business goal, including an implementation roadmap with a phased approach, corresponding timeline, identified dependencies, technology, implementation, and training costs.