Goodwill of South Central Wisconsin
Taking the guesswork out of software selection
Goodwill of South Central Wisconsin (SCWI) needed a new point-of-sale system — but it didn’t have the time or resources to lead the software selection process. Wipfli did. Our data-driven process gave leaders more confidence in their selection and investment.
The Challenge
Goodwill of SCWI was using an outdated retail point-of-sale (POS) system —and that was never meant to be a multistore solution. The team needed a more robust system to connect stores in 14 counties, create store-level reports and integrate with the back-end accounting and marketing software. The nonprofit didn’t have the resources or capacity to find a new POS vendor — but knew its audit partner, Wipfli, did.
The Solution
Wipfli helped Goodwill SCWI define its goals and expectations, then built an RFP that covered all the features and business processes the nonprofit needed in a POS. Wipfli sent the RFP to software providers that integrated with the nonprofit’s existing accounting solution or had worked with other Goodwill stores. After evaluating the responses, Wipfli and Goodwill SCWI met with leading vendors for software demonstrations. Wipfli developed an agenda for the demos to keep vendors on task.
Having the RFP developed from start to finish for us was a huge timesaver, but we also discovered that having a specialized and experienced firm like Wipfli take on the vendor selection process too meant we could choose a vendor with much more confidence than had we done all this ourselves — and that was a big benefit.”
The results
After the demos, Wipfli presented the results and helped Goodwill SCWI make a decision. The careful work that went into the RFP process meant Goodwill SCWI wasn’t taking a leap of faith — it had a data-driven process to back up its choice. That gave leaders more confidence in the selection and investment they were making.
