Client
LMC
Services
The client
LMC is the largest Forest Products and Building Materials Cooperative in the country, purchasing over 7 billion dollars from the best independent dealers in the industry. For decades, they have provided affordable manufacturing materials to small mom & pop hardware stores at a cheaper rate than competitors.
Project summary
The Financial Systems at LMC are at the core of the company’s customer and employee experiences. At the time of this engagement, these financial systems were (decades) out of date, and required extensive time, workarounds, redundant tasks, and an abundance of paper to function properly.
Nimbl was tasked with evaluating the current state of LMC’s financial systems to inform the best recommendations on how to improve/replace these systems. We designed 3 Engagement Blueprints that depicted the current state of their financial processes, highlighting pain points in the systems’ process, employee, and customer experiences. We then used this deep understanding of LMC’s end-to-end processes to investigate other options, engaging in product demos and market research to curate 2 recommendations to choose from. Each recommendation was accompanied by an implementation plan, and an explanation of its efficacy.
Process
Business Alignment
Engaged with stakeholders to uncover pain points, align solutions with business needs, and ensure smoother implementation.
System Assessment
Assessment has dual mandates, understanding LMC at an organizational level and reviewing the process flow of their financial systems.
Engagement Blueprints
A blueprint is a visual document that overlaps all of this information and allows stakeholders to keep focus on pain points and opportunities.
Recommendations
Research and analysis was packaged in a report outlining different solutions and their advantages and disadvantages against LMC’s business and user goals. Also included is the market research to provide context of how the current process stacks up to competitors.
Roadmap Development
The cost and scope of inaction vs the proposed solutions provide a roadmap to make changes and provide the information needed for informed decision making.
Recommendations
Our work focused on streamlining order processing workflows to improve efficiency and accuracy, enhancing accounts receivable tracking and collection processes, strengthening financial controls and processing speed across trade accounts and corporate payables, automating claims and corrections to reduce errors and delays, and creating a more seamless approach to managing rebates, refunds, partner incentives, and payouts.
Impact
We conducted more than 40 in-depth interviews with dealers, suppliers, IT teams, and finance departments across AP, AR, claims, and corrections to understand diverse perspectives and operational needs. From these insights, we created three Connected Blueprints that helped LMC visualize how experiences, processes, and technology work together in support of their strategic goals. We also developed a clear, actionable roadmap to streamline operations, improve collaboration, and enhance partner experiences, using research and competitive analysis to identify and shortlist four solutions aligned with LMC’s business and technology requirements.
Outcomes
The numbers.
$600k
Automated Annual Savings
95%
Reduction Claims Process Time
25%
Improvement User Satisfaction