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CNI Undergoes Tech Transformation

Based in Norman, Oklahoma, Chickasaw Nation Industries (CNI) has experienced rapid sales growth since 2015. With over a dozen Limited Liability Companies (LLC’s) and two majority owned subsidiaries under its umbrella, CNI now has personnel in 45 U.S. states, as well as a growing international presence.

Managing the rapid growth has not been an easy process. Earlier this year, the company found itself at a crossroads, needing to better leverage technology to remain competitive and efficient.

“When we surpassed $300 million in annual revenue, we were a true mid-size company, but in many ways our processes and systems were still grounded in our small company roots which hindered our ability to scale,” said Chief Administrative Officer, Rhonda Sutton.

After an evaluation of options, the company elected to make a series of investments that would increase productivity by leveraging automation to reduce manual work. 

“We wanted to offer new features without growing our support personnel or our data center footprint,” stated Robin Marcotte, CNI’s Director of Information Technology. 

Based on CNI’s strategic growth goals and its commitment to support and develop employees, the company elected to begin a series of projects leveraging “best of breed” cloud based solutions.

“Leveraging the cloud was the right thing to do for our business and for our employees,” Marcotte said.  “We could empower our teams on multiple levels, we could adopt best business practices and free up valuable time for higher level tasks, and we could simplify the user experience and offer mobile first solutions that better serve our geographically distributed workforce.”

In less than a year, CNI has upgraded its Finance system, implemented Concur for expense management, implemented Workday’s Adaptive Insights Budgeting Solution, launched Office365 and begun implementation of Workday’s Human Resources system.  The company is also planning upgrades in mobility and its corporate Intranet to better serve employees.

The goal for David Nimmo, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, is to continue growing annual revenue by double digits throughout the 2020’s.  These new platforms will deliver the scalability the company has long sought for this next phase of growth. 

 “Our mission is to build a business that supports a Nation. Thanks to the great people at CNI and their proven ability to execute both internally and for our customers, I’ve never been more optimistic about our ability to deliver on that mission,” said Nimmo.