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E-Commerce Overview |
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E-Commerce Overview |
E-Commerce is a rapidly growing field in which more and more companies are doing business on the world wide web. For advertising specialty companies it is becoming more and more common for customers to request that fulfillment catalogs be available over the Internet. This can result in large savings for advertising specialty companies due to reduced overhead costs as a result of order placement being handled over the web, as opposed to being handled by customer service reps.
As advertising specialty companies step into the brave new world of starting to do business over the Internet, they may start to realize that there is a lot to learn. They may start to wonder how they are going to accomplish Internet catalogs and how that will integrate into the accounting package. Quikey Computer Systems can help.
Quikey Computer Systems (QCS) sells an additional E-Commerce module which allows our customers to have catalogs on a web site that is fully integrated into their back end (EZZ Business Management System). QCS is uniquely positioned as the only company which can offer real-time back-end integration to your web site catalog. This means that QCS is the only company that can track stock levels, place orders, and actively change the web site based on the data that is on their back-end package.
Many other web design companies offer to put catalogs on the web, but they cannot offer real-time integration into the back-end system, only batch processing or emailed orders. What this means is that they cannot track stock levels or place orders automatically into the back-end. This results in limited functionality and re-keying of orders by customer service reps. QCS is the only package on the market which can fully integrate into the back-end and send ANY information from the back-end system to the web page. QCS can also receive and book orders from the web without any re-keying. And all of this information is exchanged real-time for up to the minute accuracy.
BASIC E-Commerce Setup
The E-Commerce back-end is set up as part of the Inventory/Fulfillment module of the EZZ Business Management System. The purpose of this documentation is not to explain how to design web pages or cover the details of HTML programming but to explain how the web pages are set up and managed on the back-end business management/accounting system.
The steps to setting up an E-Commerce catalog are as follows:
1. Set up the Fulfillment Program in Inventory & Sales Program Setup on IFM #1.
2. Set up the catalog items in Inventory Item Maintenance on IFM #3.
3. Set up the Product Categories in Inventory & Sales Program Setup on IFM #1 - F9.
Product Categories are set to group like items for placement on the same page of the web site. Product Categories create the buttons/links on the main page of the web site to the specific web page that has the products listed on it. There can be many product categories or just one. To assign a Product Category, assign it a 3 character Category Code. In the short description field briefly describe this Product Category. A Product Category can also be set up as a subset of a parent category code This will then create a new link to a new web page for the sub-category of the parent category. The extended description area allows the input of a more detailed description about this product category which can be displayed on the web page. There is no limit to the number of product categories that can be created and no limit to the number of sub categories that can be assigned to a parent category code. Changes to an existing product category can be made by hitting C to Change. Product Categories can be deleted by hitting D to Delete.
4. Assign catalog items to product categories in Inventory Item Maintenance on IFM #3 - sF4.
Items can be assigned to as many product categories as you like. This will determine which web page the items will appear on.
5. Input the E-Commerce Info for the items in Inventory Item Maintenance on IFM #3 - sF1.
The most important information that is entered here is the I=Item Features and the O=Ordering Notes sections. In I=Item Features, enter any marketing info that should be displayed about the item on the web page. In O=Ordering Notes, enter any ordering constrictions such as lead time, sizing price increases, second color imprints, etc. The prompts above the marketing text allow the setting of "sockets" or prompts that the web page HTML tags can read to change elements on the web page. These are hard coded prompts that we felt might be useful to notate on the web page. We will be adding user-definable sockets in the near future.
Note: All steps below this are dealing with the web deployment of the E-Commerce Module. If QCS has been contracted to do this, then we will handle these steps. Otherwise any questions about how to handle these steps would be considered billable time.
6. Design and implement the web page layout. This is usually handled with management making decisions as to what the web site will look like and then having graphic artists and HTML coders design the site. We can supply templates that can be used to aid in web site design. These templates will have all the appropriate HTML tags to grab information from the back-end. QCS can handle this for you and then you will have only one supplier to deal with regarding the web site and it's back-end integration.
7. Work with the web server. This is handled through your ISP. We use Microsoft's Internet Information Service (IIS) that supports Active Server Pages (ASP). The web server must use IIS and support ASP. QCS can do web hosting and handle all of the details, or you can use some other ISP to handle it.
