Have you seen the Web-based ordering and tracking system called Ironside yet?
The Ironside site at http://www.ironside.com has detailed information on the capabilities of the system, so I won't repeat it here, except to summarize it as follows: If you are a reseller and you want to order a product, you want to know where it is and how long it is going to take to get it. Ironside is a very good example of a database-driven system that does this.
Because Beamscope owns a majority stake in Ironside, it should come as no surprise that the system is used for ordering and tracking Beamscope products. But, clearly, similar technology is bound to become ubiquitous in the near future. For virtually all manufacturers and distributors, Ironside is merely a harbinger of things to come.
For a Web-based system written primarily in Java, Ironside performs well. Response times are usually less than a second. And retailers can view color photos and video clips of most of the 6,500 products the distributor stocks.
Real-time access to inventory data means that you can see what's available, scan current promotional offers, browse pages describing manufacturers' latest products, and place an order and receive immediate confirmation. As of this past fall, retailers can track their shipments, too, thanks to a live data feed from United Parcel Service Inc.
Beamscope has not yet delved into electronic payments, but the system holds financial data on its customers and tracks outstanding invoices and credit status. Notice is given when credit limits are exceeded. If all's okay, the system accepts the order and sends out an invoice via postal service or fax.
Developing sophisticated systems like this takes some pretty big money, of course. An article on the Ironside Web site says the system cost about $250,000 to build, in addition to Beamscope's $1 million investment in Ironside. But such Web-based investments are an important step along the road to E-commerce.
I first heard about Ironside during a conversation with a manufacturer's rep sitting next to me on the return trip from Comdex/Fall in Las Vegas. We were discussing the relative merits and drawbacks of dealing direct versus working with distributors. Considering how the coming wave of E-commerce might affect existing vendor/customer relationships, I offered the opinion that when the volume or dollar value justifies it, dealing direct makes sense. However, in lower volumes, he reminded me, the distributor's value is clear. But, I wondered, couldn't (and wouldn't?) manufacturers start to force distributors away from the big money by setting up virtual distribution networks? If the wholesaler is becoming the New Storefront in the Web economy, is the retailer expected to become the value-adder, and is the manufacturer destined to encroach upon the distributor's traditional turf?
Walter Forbes, the CEO of Cendant Corp., apparently thinks so. Forbes is quoted in Wired magazine as saying he has learned that "the Internet is not a haven for today's retail economy - 'The last thing retailers want is perfect information.'"
Forbes says scale, as materialized by price, is going to be increasingly important. Thus, it makes sense to develop strategic relationships much as grocers did over the last few decades to compete more effectively with supermarts. Similarly, Forbes believes that it will be wholesale-level pricing that will eventually prove to be the model that dominates the on-line shopping world, not a retail model that works on the Web.
The article said when customers called a Ramada Inn to make travel reservations, a clerk would ask if they would be interested in joining a discount club, offering $20 in free gas coupons as an incentive. This idea of pinpointing the exact times when consumers are most receptive to a certain pitch is one that anyone selling a product can leverage to improve sales opportunities.
Whether you are building E-commerce systems or reinforcing shopper loyalty using the equivalent of frequent flyer points, such questions are worth asking, as on-line databases spring up like spring daffodils and E-commerce opportunities emerge through the enabling facility of the Web as a ubiquitous business information access tool. And remember: selling your product or service is important, too.
Graeme Bennett is a former computer retailer. He can be reached at Graeme@PCBuyersGuide.com
OS Update
With Microsoft's announcement that it will begin selling the final version of Windows 2000 to the general public starting in February 2000 for about US$319, the future looks bright for many of the technologies that Win2K promises to bring to long-suffering NT users. DirectX 7.0, USB, FireWire, DVD (Win2K drivers for the best-of-breed Hollywood Plus from Sigma Designs are already available), 3D-enabled graphics cards like the Voodoo3, ATI Rage 128 and Nvidia TNT2 (etc., etc.), and ACPI fans will all be beneficiaries.
Statistics like the January 1998 International Data Corp. report that saw Windows 95 account for 69.4 per cent of the 76.6 million OS units shipped in 1997, suggest that there is still plenty of other operating system action, too - especially when one notes that IDC says Windows NT Workstation shipments grew a whopping 208.5 per cent, bringing its market share from three to 9.2 per cent.
Apple, meanwhile, is putting the final touches on its Mac OS X and QuickTime Live (streaming) technologies. Possibly even more than the new OS, I expect the cross-platform QuickTime streaming will produce a convergence effect. QuickTime, you see, directly supports the digital video format used in those cool new DV digital videocams. QuickTime 4.0 - on both Macs and Windows - directly reads and writes the same data format that is sent through a FireWire connection. That, combined with Windows 2000's support for FireWire hardware and the big graphics push currently underway in the Wintel market, sounds like a market builder.
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