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    13 — Worked example · northwind-harbor

    Northwind Harbor Outfitters

    Fictional · This organization and everything about it are invented for the catalog. Application names, teams, dispositions and figures describe no real company. Products named through the catalog are the real products, imagined as this company's instances.

    A fictional outdoor-goods retailer that grew from a harbor-town store into a chain, bought a smaller competitor, and now runs forty-two applications across stores, online, supply chain, finance, people and technology. Its portfolio has the shape most retailers recognize: a modern storefront bolted to an aging back office, three places an order can live, two customer masters that disagree, and a handful of spreadsheets doing the work of systems. It exists so the catalog's capabilities, data concepts, products and templates can be shown doing a real job on something that is safe to publish.

    Heat map · applications per L1 capability

    Darker means more applications touch the capability or its children; the L2 lines under each show how many realize it directly, and a count above one is an overlap worth a look.

    MC-10Direct & Govern

    MC-20Finance

    MC-30People & Workplace

    MC-40Customer & Market

    MC-50Products & Services

    MC-60Operations & Supply

    MC-70Technology & Data

    MC-80Resilience & Responsibility

    retailRetail & Consumer Goods (industry)

    Overlaps · 10

    L2 capabilities more than one application realizes directly.

    Gaps · 6

    Retail & Consumer Goods L2 capabilities no application realizes.

    Contested masters · 1

    What an architect reads off it

    1. 01Three applications can place or hold a customer order (the storefront, the store point of sale and the legacy mail-order system), so Order Capture & Validation has no single owner and promises differ by channel; this is the first consolidation case.
    2. 02Customer identity is mastered twice, in the loyalty platform and the CRM, with no agreed survivorship rules; the gap matrix shows the Customer Data Concept with two masters, which the catalog's authoring rule for Data Concepts says is the exception, not the norm.
    3. 03The spreadsheet-based open-to-buy and the email-based vendor returns process realize real capabilities with no system of record behind them; they appear in the matrix as applications with no support, a gap wearing an application's name, which is the point of mapping to a capability model rather than to an application list.
    4. 04Dispositions follow the map, not the vendor: the mail-order system is eliminate because every capability it realizes is also realized elsewhere, while the thirty-year-old warehouse system is tolerate because nothing else covers Inbound and Outbound Operations yet.
    5. 05Technology capabilities are covered by a small number of broad platforms with full support; the thin coverage is on the business side, in merchandising planning and returns disposition, where the chain's margin actually lives.

    Applications · 42

    • XA-010

      Harbor Online Store

      invest

      saas · Shopify · Digital Commerce · high cost

      The web and mobile storefront, catalog presentation, cart and checkout for the online channel, plus the gift card program.

      Note · Became the de facto product catalog master when the old merchandising system stopped getting content updates; that was never decided.

      Master of Product

    • XA-020

      Tideline POS

      tolerate

      commercial · Store Technology · medium cost

      The store point of sale in all forty-four stores: checkout, tender, returns at the till and the store-level view of stock.

      Note · Captures orders for ship-from-store, so it is the second place an order can live.

    • XA-030

      Mail-Order Desk

      eliminate

      legacy · Customer Care · low cost

      The telephone and catalog order system inherited from the acquired competitor, still used by its long-standing customers and by the call center for complex orders.

      Note · Third order system. Its two hundred remaining weekly orders are the whole reason it survives.

    • XA-040

      Storefront Content Studio

      invest

      in-house · Digital Commerce · low cost

      Internal tool where merchandisers write product copy, pick images and schedule seasonal landing pages for the online store.

    • XA-050

      Compass Loyalty

      invest

      saas · Marketing · medium cost

      The membership program: points, tiers, member offers and the member profile the stores and the website both read.

      Note · One of two customer masters. Holds 1.8 million member records, more than the CRM.

      Master of Customer

    • XA-060

      Relay CRM

      tolerate

      saas · Salesforce · Sales Operations · medium cost

      Customer records, service cases and marketing journeys for the corporate sales team that sells to outfitters, schools and clubs.

      Note · The other customer master. Business customers only in theory; consumers who phoned the call center are in here too.

      Master of Customer, Contact, Case

    • XA-070

      Store Scheduler

      tolerate

      saas · Store Operations · medium cost

      Shift planning, time clock and labor forecasting for store associates, fed by store traffic counts.

    • XA-080

      Store Compliance Checklists

      tolerate

      saas · Store Operations · low cost

      Daily opening, closing, safety and visual-standard checklists completed on store tablets, with photo evidence and district review.

    • XA-090

      Shrink Watch

      tolerate

      commercial · Sensormatic Solutions · Loss Prevention · medium cost

      Electronic article surveillance, traffic counting and shrink analytics across the store fleet.

    • XA-100

      Site Finder

      invest

      saas · Placer.ai · Real Estate · low cost

      Foot-traffic and trade-area analytics used to pick new store sites and to judge the fleet's weak performers.

    • XA-110

      Open-to-Buy Workbook

      migrate

      in-house · Merchandising · low cost

      The buying budget and open-to-buy position by category and season, maintained in a shared spreadsheet with macros nobody dares touch.

      Note · Realizes a core merchandising capability with a spreadsheet. The clearest case for a planning application.

    • XA-120

      Range Planner

      migrate

      commercial · Merchandising · medium cost

      Assortment and space planning by store cluster, producing planograms for the visual merchandising team.

      Note · Vendor announced end of support for the on-premises edition; the SaaS edition changes the data model.

    • XA-130

      Markdown Engine

      invest

      in-house · Merchandising Analytics · low cost

      Weekly clearance pricing recommendations by store from sell-through and weeks of cover, approved by category managers.

    • XA-140

      Promo Calendar

      tolerate

      saas · Category Management · medium cost

      Promotional event planning, offer setup and post-event evaluation, including the vendor-funded promotions.

    • XA-150

      Demand Forecaster

      invest

      saas · Supply Chain Planning · medium cost

      Store and online demand forecasts by item and week, driving replenishment and the buying plan.

    • XA-160

      Quayside WMS

      tolerate

      legacy · Distribution · medium cost

      Warehouse management in both distribution centers: receiving, put-away, picking, packing and shipping, on a thirty-year-old codebase the team knows by heart.

      Note · Tolerate, not eliminate: nothing else covers warehouse operations, and the replacement is a multi-year program.

      Master of Inventory Balance

    • XA-170

      Freight Desk

      tolerate

      saas · Distribution · medium cost

      Carrier selection, shipment booking, tracking and freight invoice audit for inbound and outbound freight.

      Master of Shipment

    • XA-180

      Order Hub

      invest

      in-house · Digital Commerce · medium cost

      Omnichannel order orchestration: sources each order line from a store or distribution center, tracks exceptions and feeds the customer order status page.

      Note · The intended single order master, but the point of sale and the mail-order system still hold orders it never sees.

      Master of Sales Order

    • XA-190

      Returns Portal

      tolerate

      saas · Customer Care · low cost

      Online return authorization and label generation for customers, with return reasons captured for merchandising.

    • XA-200

      Vendor Returns Mailbox

      migrate

      in-house · Merchandising · low cost

      Vendor return and recall coordination run from a shared mailbox and a tracking spreadsheet, with no system of record.

      Note · A gap wearing an application's name. Recalls are managed by whoever reads the mailbox first.

    • XA-220

      Purchasing Module

      tolerate

      commercial · Finance Systems · medium cost

      Purchase orders to vendors, goods receipt matching and the procurement reporting that feeds finance; part of the finance suite.

      Master of Purchase Order

    • XA-240

      Payables Module

      tolerate

      commercial · Finance Systems · medium cost

      Supplier invoice processing, three-way matching, payment runs and the supplier payment file to the bank; part of the finance suite.

      Master of Invoice

    • XA-250

      Plan & Forecast

      invest

      saas · Financial Planning · medium cost

      Annual budget, quarterly reforecast and the store-level profit and loss used in district reviews.

    • XA-260

      Sales Tax Service

      tolerate

      saas · Avalara · Tax · low cost

      Sales tax calculation at the till and online, exemption certificates for business customers, and the monthly filings across states.

    • XA-270

      Treasury Workstation

      tolerate

      saas · Treasury · low cost

      Daily cash position across bank accounts, store deposit reconciliation and the payment approvals for large transfers.

      Master of Payment

    • XA-280

      Business Billing

      migrate

      in-house · Finance Systems · low cost

      Invoicing, credit limits and collections for business customers who buy on account, built on the CRM's data.

      Note · A second place invoices are produced; the mail-order system is the other. Candidate to fold into the finance suite.

    • XA-300

      Hiring Board

      tolerate

      saas · Talent Acquisition · low cost

      Job postings, applicant tracking and offers, with the seasonal hiring surge for the holiday period as its hardest month.

    • XA-310

      Ridgeline Learning

      tolerate

      saas · People Operations · low cost

      Product knowledge and safety training for store associates, with completion records that feed the compliance checklists.

    • XA-330

      Identity Service

      invest

      saas · Okta · Security Engineering · medium cost

      Single sign-on, multi-factor authentication and lifecycle provisioning for employees, with the store associate badge login.

      Master of Digital Identity

    • XA-350

      Delivery Tracker

      tolerate

      saas · Jira · Engineering · low cost

      Backlogs, sprints and release plans for the in-house engineering teams.

    • XA-360

      Code Platform

      invest

      saas · GitHub · Engineering · medium cost

      Source control, pull requests and the build and deployment pipelines for every in-house application.

    • XA-370

      Lantern Data Platform

      invest

      saas · Snowflake · Data & Analytics · high cost

      The warehouse of sales, inventory, loyalty and web analytics data behind every dashboard and the demand forecaster.

    • XA-380

      Observability Service

      tolerate

      saas · Datadog · Technology Operations · medium cost

      Logs, metrics, traces and alerting for the storefront, the order hub and the integration layer.

    • XA-390

      Integration Layer

      invest

      in-house · Engineering · medium cost

      The message broker and the adapters that move orders, stock, prices and customers between the storefront, the point of sale, the warehouse and the ledger.

      Note · Carries most of the events in the catalog's Events section; its contracts are where the three order systems are reconciled, badly.

    • XA-420

      Store Security Console

      tolerate

      commercial · Loss Prevention · medium cost

      Camera, alarm and door access management for stores and distribution centers, monitored by the loss prevention center.