Company: Toromont Industries Ltd. Headquarters: Toronto Employees: 1,900 Revenue: U.S. $444 million (1998) CIO: Mike Cuddy Profile: Founded in 1961, Toromont Industries is a Canadian holding company made up of six business units grouped into two divisions. The Toromont Equipment Group consists of Toromont CAT, one of the largest authorized Caterpillar dealerships in North America, and Battlefield Equipment Rentals, which rents heavy construction machinery. The Toromont Refrigeration Group consists of Cimco Refrigeration, which manufacturers large refrigeration units for both industrial and recreational use; Toromont Process Systems, which designs gas compression and refrigeration systems for the oil industry; and Aero Tech Manufacturing, which develops sheet metals. A sixth unit, Toromont Energy, was recently formed to pursue opportunities in Ontario's deregulating power markets. Toromont's Equipment Group accounts for 70% of the parent company's annual revenues. While the construction business is booming in North America, increasing competition and lower profit margins on equipment sales are prompting Toromont to position its CAT dealership as a service--instead of a sales--operation. Toromont believes its customers are willing to pay more for services such as on-site maintenance, routine diagnostics, preventative maintenance, and round-the-clock customer service for the life of their equipment. In line with this goal, Toromont increased its heavy-equipment service contracts by tenfold last year. Implementing a Web system to offer clients the ultimate in online customer service is key to the success of Toromont's business goals for 2000.

Business Opportunity:
Toromont would like to enhance and improve the way it does business with its CAT dealership customers. The goals are to provide customers with better access to sales and service information and to give customers the ability to update information and place orders over the Internet. Not only will such a Web-based customer-services system help Toromont differentiate itself from its competitors, but it will help keep customers for the long term. Toromont has a legacy back-end order-entry system (fully integrated with inventory, financials, etc.) that is based on AS/400 and serves as the main transaction processor. Today, customers order parts by calling the company's parts department. Customers also must call to check part prices and availability, as well as the status of a machine that's in the shop for service. Toromont's goal is to provide these and other capabilities in a Web environment. Another priority is to let customers check their invoices in real time and find out which are outstanding. CIO Mike Cuddy envisions using portals to personalize the customer experience.

The design must permit real-time interaction with the AS/400 and the AS/400 data, executing edits within the current AS/400 code and handling error conditions in real time. To ensure referential data integrity, the Web-based server functions must not access data directly from the AS/400 databases. Rather, all data entered into the AS/400 system must flow through the online update programs that exist today. Toromont does not want to rewrite this code, nor can it afford the risk of bypassing the code and writing directly to the order-entry system's databases. Similarly, inquiry functions should use the existing SQL queries as they retrieve information from multiple tables, perform calculations, and return dynamically created data sets. Some of the desired Web functions include: