Solving the ‘Data Fragmentation’ Crisis for a $200M National Bid
Rapid Application Development to Unify Dealer Network
The Buy Canadian Opportunity
As part of the Federal Government’s mandate to prioritize Canadian-owned businesses, Home Hardware was uniquely positioned to secure a national vendor contract with CORCAN.
This tender involves supplying materials for:
Corrections Canada
Department of National Defence
Border Services
Fisheries & Parks Canada
The Challenge: Distributed Data
Unlike corporate-owned big-box stores, Home Hardware is a true co-op. Each store is independently run and makes its own decisions on what lumber management tools and sales processes to use.
This posed a major roadblock in the RFP process. The government required publicly accessible retail price lists for specific commodities, but with such a wide range of software being used, it was impossible to fulfill this requirement without creating a new, centralized pricing hub.
The Solution
Rapid Application Development. Leveraging years of experience working with the Atkinson Home Hardware team and deep understanding of the Profitmaster lumber management system, Acadian was able to rapidly develop a “Retail Price Hub” to fulfill the RFP requirements.
Ingest Data
We built scripts to ingest raw data from the multitude of different POS systems being used by dealers across Canada.
Normalize Data
Our engine cleaned and standardized the disparate data streams into a single, consistent structure compliant with the RFP.
Publish Data
We automatically pushed the clean data to a new public-facing retail pricing website that met strict government standards.
The Result
By overcoming the technical barriers of a fragmented dealer network, Home Hardware successfully secured the national standing offer.
Local Impact
For our direct client, the impact was immediate. The Atkinson team in Kingston estimates this contract alone will generate several million dollars in new annual revenue for their local stores, securing jobs and growth for the local community.
This project stands as a testament to how custom technology can bridge the gap between local independence and national scale.
The CORCAN bid was a massive undertaking with zero room for error. We had to combine data from independent dealers across the country into a single format, something our standard systems just couldn’t do. Chris and the team at Acadian stepped in and built the custom pricing hub we needed in record time. We simply wouldn’t have been able to navigate the technical requirements of this contract without them.