Calibrating Collaboration

Rockford Corporation is an audio electronics company that manufactures product lines for the car stereo and professional audio markets, including recording studios and movie theaters. The company has a strategic goal of growing its business through use of technology rather than through growth in headcount and overhead.

The $100-million company has more than nearly 300 employees working at its Tempe, Arizona (headquarters) and Grand Rapids, Michigan manufacturing facilities, and distribution warehouses in Brehman, Germany, and Singapore. Rockford sells its products domestically through 41 manufacturing representatives, who manage a network of 1400 dealers, and internationally through some 90 distributors.

The Challenge

To speed development of high-quality products, Rockford Corporation needed to improve collaboration between its engineering and manufacturing groups as well as with a key supplier of accessories. The company also wanted sales and marketing to be able to provide feedback early in the product design process. The typical process of up to 10 rounds of design revisions communicated by phone and fax was too slow for this fast-moving, competitive market.

In addition, to improve sales performance, Rockford needed to get more timely information to its channels and improve coordination across order fulfillment and distribution functions. In the past, central sales staff spent hours every day printing out reports from the sales reports from a centralized VAX system and faxing them to manufacturing reps and dealers.

In 1995, the company migrated to an Oracle database with sales applications, which provided convenient forms and reporting options. Rockford tried to provide its channels with online access to this information by installing the applications on PCs at manufacturing representative sites and by providing dial-in 800-line access to the corporate network. But the time sales managers saved in printing and faxing was offset by the time the Rockford IT group now spent providing technical support to remote users. Updates, which occurred nearly every month, usually resulted in hours of phone time helping manufacturing representatives install the software, and occasionally even trips to do onsite troubleshooting.

Still, manufacturing representatives liked having immediate access to information--they were so eager that some dialed up first thing in the morning and stayed on line all day. "When I saw the first phone bill, I knew we were going to have to find a better way," says Rockford network administrator Chris Duffy.

The Solution

Rockford installed a Cisco wide-area network to support an IP-based intranet and extranet. A Cisco model 2503 router and Cisco PIX Firewall in Tempe provides Internet access and manages incoming extranet calls from sales channels. Cisco model 2511 routers in both Tempe and Grand Rapids support dialup non-Internet access for traveling employees. Cisco model 3810 routers support Sprint Frame Relay circuits between Tempe, Brehman, and Singapore. The Cisco equipment integrates with ATM campus backbones in Tempe and Grand Rapids facilities, which are connected by a pair of T1 lines. A Cisco model 4500 in the Tempe provides connectivity with American Connection, Inc., a key supplier of cables, connectors, batteries, and other accessories.

The intranet enables Rockford employees at all facilities to share information, including engineering design information and drawings. The company uses videoconferencing over its ATM network, and voice over IP across all links. Employees in Singapore dial an internal four-digit extension to talk to colleagues in Grand Rapids. "There is tremendous psychological advantage in being able to dial an internal extension and talk to a fellow employee half way around the world. Everybody feels more like a member of the same team," says Duffy.

The extranet provides manufacturing reps, dealers, and distributors with dialup Internet access to Oracle sales applications and data. All of the forms and reports previously available when Oracle applications were installed on remote PCs--recent shipments, order status and account status, growth incentives and rebates, cooperative advertising balances--can now be accessed and used even more easily through a centralized Web server. In addition, the company is now rolling out a new online order entry application and plans to deploy Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) capabilities over the extranet for inventory transfer and financial transactions.

Duffy says the company chose Cisco for three reasons: "Cisco's phenomenal reputation for performance and reliability; the consistency across the Cisco product lines, which makes network administration so much easier and keeps our training costs low; and the strong foundation Cisco provides for companies that are looking to expand internationally and use technology aggressively. We know that whatever we need to do for our business, Cisco will have the means."

The Results

Rockford is achieving its goal of growing its business through use of technology rather than additional headcount and overhead. Four years ago, Rockford was a $60-million company with about 475 employees; today, it is a $100-million company with about 335 employees. Four years ago in the IT department, five people supported a VAX application. Today, the staff has grown to nine, but it supports all of the company's PCs, LANs, and WANs, a wide range of client/server applications, corporate-wide e-mail, voice over IP, videoconferencing, and Internet access and, extranet, and intranet Web servers.

Revenue Generation

Improved coordination across facilities is accelerating product development cycles. The amplifier for a recent product was designed and engineered in Tempe while the speakers and box were designed in Grand Rapids. With the ability to share information early in the development process, an average of 10 rounds of design revisions has been reduced to one or two. The extranet is also improving channel performance by providing dealers with fast access to information without regard to time zones and office hours. Rockford sales staff, who manage the channels, are more productive because they don't have to constantly install new software on their laptop computers. The information they access is more current because IT can now update databases and applications weekly or daily if necessary by simply installing the update once on the Web server. Users simply use their Web browser for immediate access. With this scalable solution, Rockford is able to extend extranet participation from its core group of 25 manufacturing representatives to all 1200 dealers and 30 international distributors.

Cost savings

In addition to reduced expenditures on printing, faxing, and mailing documents from facility to facility, Rockford saves $1200 to 2000 a month on its long-distance phone bills using voice over IP. The company is also saving up to $4000 a month by eliminating 800-line charges for manufacturing representative/dealer remote access. Extranet participants pay for their own local calls to an Internet service provider (ISP). Administrative costs are also down; Rockford is no longer responsible for channel partner hardware and modems, nor do the company have to maintain another set of login IDs and passwords for these users. Because browser access is so simple, the IT group receives relatively few calls; most technical support is provided by the ISPs.

Future Plans

Rockford plans to extend its extranet to encompass suppliers. On its intranet, Rockford is investigating IP multicasting for delivering training videos, which can help speed product rollouts and cut costs by eliminating the need for trainers to travel to all sites. The company plans to take its public Internet site beyond publishing information, to provide interactive applications that give customers secure access to the same valuable information available today to the company's employees and partners. Rockford also wants to explore ways to improve customer support using advanced multimedia applications, such as video phone connections.