Hardware distributor's strategic information system

“There are all sorts of helpful services we can provide to our customers, if only they'll take them,” said Kingsley Allaster, Vice President, Finance for D. H. Howden & Co. Ltd., a London, Ontario‐based hardware distributor, thinking out loud about ways that his firm could bind themselves more tightly to their existing customers — retail hardware store dealers. Allaster had long championed the use of information technology as a tool for gaining a competitive advantage over other distributors. The philosophy of Howden was to constantly strive for ways to help the dealers become more successful. “Their success will eventually become our success,” thought Allaster, working through the problem of how best to use information technology to develop systems that the dealers themselves could use to improve their own success. He knew that, no matter how sophisticated a support system might be, if the dealers refused to adopt it and use it, the whole effort would fail.