Cabinetworks: Efficient IT and Superior Customer Experience Using EA

Complex Technology Landscape Due to M&As and Driving Superior Customer Experience as a Differentiator

As the largest privately held cabinet manufacturer in the US, Cabinetworks has been on a extensive M&A journey and needed to integrate their acquisitions better while streamlining their application portfolio. They identified four initiatives they wanted to achieve through improving alignment between IT and business: 

• Continuing their journey of post-merger integration and preparing for more.
• Simplifying their tech stack and making tech a driver for business change.
• Removing silos to enable manufacturing of multiple brands across multiple locations.
• Differentiating themselves in the market through superior customer experience.

Complexity and Lack of Insight

Spearheaded by Ardoq partner, Slalom Consulting, Cabinetworks embarked on a project to overcome these key challenges:

• Complex IT environment: As a result of its long history of mergers and acquisitions, Cabinetworks had a complex environment of eight different Enterprise Resource Planning systems and over 400 applications and data touch points across 18 manufacturing locations.
• Data-rich but insight-poor: The numerous systems meant that they had lots of data sources but no way to generate meaningful insights from them.
• No existing Enterprise Architecture capability: They lacked a clear understanding of how governance, processes, application landscape and business capabilities interacted.

“We were very data-rich but insight-poor. There was no lack of data available, but it couldn’t be used to drive insights or proactive action.”
- Heidi Mattison, Chief Technology Officer, Cabinetworks Group

 

Creating and Maturing an Enterprise Architecture (EA) Function

Over the course of nine months, Ardoq partner, Slalom worked with Cabinetworks to introduce and mature an EA function in the company. Drawing on Slalom’s proven experience in making EA a strategic business tool, they created:

• A charter, a vision and a mission statement to define roles and responsibilities within EA.
• Guardrails for making good decisions about technology using guiding principles and processes for engaging the business on initiatives.
• A new demand management process to drive collaboration between IT and the business.

“Slalom introduced us to what they called an ‘Enterprise Architecture jump-start,’ which took Cabinetworks from absolute ground zero to a mature state of EA in just nine months. This was critical to enabling our four key initiatives.”- Heidi Mattison

Breaking Down Silos Between Business and IT

As part of this process, interviews were conducted with stakeholders from all areas of the business to gather key information such as business goals, application ownership, and financial details. This helped to gain buy-in from the larger organization as they got used to the new ways of collaborating with IT.

Cabinetworks identified quick wins they could achieve early on to demonstrate to different departments the value of EA. Advocates from these departments could then spread the EA approach to other parts of the business while using a common vernacular.

Throughout the process, IT ensured that their activities were aligned with business strategy, bringing tangible benefits for key business concerns like product manufacturing and customer experience.

 

How Ardoq Helped

Using Ardoq, Cabinetworks quickly captured information from across the business, mapped their IT landscape, and built a digital twin of the organization. This powerful resource became their single source of truth, enabling them to unlock valuable insights in record time and make smarter, data-driven decisions with confidence.

To develop an industry-leading B2B portal, Cabinetworks were able to visualize their source and target systems within Ardoq, which data type they processed, along with every Talend and ETL integration. They were able to bring data in quickly using Ardoq’s out-of-the-box capabilities as well as its advanced suite of integrations. The flexible metamodel allowed them to capture any level of detail required about each data set, from business capabilities to frequency of occurrence.

“Capturing information about applications and their alignment with business capabilities in Ardoq allowed us to generate insights quickly. We avoided buying a new solution because we realized the functionality the business needed already existed within another application.”

- Mark Holt, Director of Technology, Slalom Consulting

 

Key Outcomes With Ardoq: Improved Information Capture and Decision-Making Across The Business

Technology: 

• Within one year with Ardoq, Cabinetworks rationalized 30 applications, saving over $800,000 a year.
• Full understanding of application portfolio and how it aligns with business capabilities.
• Able to leverage existing technology better rather than acquiring new solutions.

Customer Experience: 

• Launched an industry-leading B2B portal that consolidates and streamlines order processes and provides a superior experience for their 8,000 customers.

Marketing and Brand: 

• Comprehensive library of brands, product lines, channels, product hierarchy, and assembly plants.
• Better decision-making for brand management.

Operations and Strategy: 

• Mapping of manufacturing capabilities such as plant type, architecture capability, and asset library.
• Rapid assessment of manufacturing capacity and M&A.

Wider Organization: 

• A new culture of collaboration between IT and business.
• Business partners feel ownership over applications and the processes of application ownership and business capability mapping.

Looking Forward

Cabinetworks hopes to mature its EA functionality further, allowing technology to enable new business initiatives and support potential new M&A activities.

About Cabinetworks

Cabinetworks Group is America's largest privately held cabinet manufacturer. Formed in 2020, the group brings together 18 brands with a history stretching back over 100 years under one vision and mission: to help every dream kitchen find its way home.

Headquartered in Livonia, Michigan, Cabinetworks has over 8,000 employees across 18 manufacturing facilities and 24 locations in the United States, including Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

Learn more about Cabinetworks’ story by watching their live webinar, How Cabinetworks' CTO Pioneered a Differentiated Customer Experience & Enhanced IT Efficiency with EA.