Muttart Conservatory — online store
Over $80,000 in overtime saved by choosing the right tool instead of the most code.
- Year
- 2020
- Duration
- Under 3 weeks
- Role
- CRM Manager, City of Edmonton (Parks & Recreation)
- Approach
- Shopify (a build-vs-buy decision)
- Client
- Muttart Conservatory
The problem
When COVID forced a fast move to online sales, the team's existing approach bent a CRM into e-commerce it was never built for — costing the City of Edmonton's Parks & Recreation department more than $80,000 in overtime and heavy manual labour.
The constraint
The pivot had to happen in weeks, not months, while the situation changed by the day — and it had to be something city staff could actually run themselves.
What I did
This was my own call, made from inside the organization. As CRM Manager in the City of Edmonton's Parks & Recreation department, I didn't wait for a mandate.
When COVID forced Muttart Conservatory's sales online, the existing approach was forcing a CRM to behave like a store — badly, and expensively. So I made the build-vs-buy decision: stand up Shopify, an existing platform with everything needed to run solid online sales out of the box, and deliver it in under three weeks.
The senior move here wasn't more code — it was knowing when not to build.
The outcome
More than $80,000 saved in overtime versus the previous CRM workaround, and staff freed from heavy manual work — Muttart Conservatory's online sales running on a platform built for the job.
Have something like this to build?
If it matters, it's worth a short call — thirty minutes to pressure-test the idea, the timeline, and whether I'm the right person to ship it.