March 2023 - 44

TECHNOLOGY
Laying the
Technology
Foundation
for Future Growth
How Chalet Nursery in Wilmette,
Illinois, partnered with the right
technology companies and
creatively implemented them
into the business.
By Lawson Thalmann
A
s a smaller company, it's difficult to keep up with
technology, especially since delivering these
experiences seems to require spending big. However,
by partnering with the right technology companies and
being creative with implementing them into the business,
Chalet has been able to punch above our weight and fulfill
even the highest expectations of our customers. I'll take you
through our journey to this point and where it will take us
from here. I hope you can learn from our experience!
The Technology
We view our software as part of the Chalet team. In many
cases, it's carrying out tasks that used to be carried out by
staff, empowering our people to do even better things with
their time. Let's get to know a few of the key technology
teammates at Chalet before diving into the story.
Shopify
Shopify is known for being an e-commerce platform, but
we've also enlisted its services for our point of sale (POS)
system. Shopify has created a juggernaut of business on the
e-commerce side by providing millions of entrepreneurs with
the tools to scale their businesses. The $50 billion company
has turned their war chest toward brick and mortar to create
the " retail operating system " of the future.
Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer service platform operated by our
internal customer contact center (CCC). We're now in the
age where people will interact with us on endless channels:
email, text, web forms, web chats, social media and still
good old-fashioned phone calls. Zendesk fields all of that
and helps the CCC make sure all inquiries are taken care of
through its ticketing system.
44 | LAWN & GARDEN RETAILER | MARCH 2023
Acumatica
We're implementing Acumatica - a powerful software
tool within the category of enterprise resource planning, or
ERP. It has a lot of bells and whistles, but we are using its
inventory and accounting tools. It integrates well into our
tech stack since it plays nicely with both Shopify and our
landscape software, Aspire.
Klaviyo
This is our email and now SMS text platform. It's tightly
integrated with Shopify, allowing us to get very granular in
our messaging using POS and e-commerce transaction data.
We can send automated flows that are set and forget to
drive revenue without any human effort.
Aligning With Our Teams
A decade ago, it was common to see one or two software
programs running all the functions of a company. Now,
businesses more often have a multitude of software
programs that serve more specified purposes. It allows for
specialization where you select the " best of breed " software
for each function. This contrasts to the " jack of all trades "
approach of old.
This approach aligns with our functional organizational
structure. That is, we have customer-facing teams and
product-facing teams that perform their day-to-day
processes in software aligned to their roles. The software is
essentially part of that team learning to work well together
over time. For example, Shopify works hand in hand with
our customer experience and sales teams to, among other
things, sell stuff. Our buying, receiving and fulfillment teams
work with Acumatica to keep great products coming in,
merchandised, and accurately organized and counted.
Just as we want our cross-functional teams to work in
harmony with one another, it's critically important to choose
Integrating software together has allowed Chalet staff
to be more productive. Photo courtesy of Chalet.
March 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of March 2023
