Blog

A Holiday Message from Commerce Vision

by Commerce Vision's Managing Director - John Farnea
December 22, 2011

2011 is closing fast and I wanted to take some time out to reflect on the year and to thank you for your continuing support.

So 2011 is in fact the 10th Anniversary of our humble beginnings working from ‘arty’ Paddington and the earliest versions of Microsoft’s .NET development tools to create our Customer Self Service application – recognised today as one of the leading eCommerce solutions available in the market. Over the last 10 years we have grown as a company, and individuals on both a professional and personal level with some simple but key tenets built out of our experience working with companies over the last 25+ years. These are:

• Is there a simple way of solving the problem?
• Have integrity and be accountable
• Be fair and have respect in all our dealings
• Deliver what we promise

In 2011, we hope we have delivered on the above in our interactions with you. So what’s in store for 2012 and beyond? Well from our discussions with you, we realise that business is becoming more complex, your customers are demanding more, agility and speed to market are critical, and the WWW is now more important than ever and is a necessary channel for you to trade and interact with your customers and suppliers.

With these as market forces we realised that whilst we have grown in providing ‘sellside’ solutions for your business, and for some have provided mobility for sales reps, we needed to significantly increase our investment in ongoing development. This development needed to include our flagship Customer Self Service application, our Mobile Application Framework to deliver Mobile Sales and Service, and a solution to our customers ‘buyside’ eCommerce. We are also making a significant investment in our CMS (Content Management System) and back end administration console in 2012 to simplify the administration of your web site, and allow you to take advantage of the huge amount of new features in the software with greater ease.

I am also pleased to announce that we have released our new Mobile Sales application (it runs on iPhone, iPad, Android, – any HTML 5 device), and have also released key applications in our Procure to Pay solution set with several customers completing projects and shortly going into production. Our team will be contacting you early in 2012 to join us on a webinar to show how these applications may add value to your business.

You will also be seeing some new people joining our team early in the New Year. So on behalf of all the Commerce Vision team, I would like to wish you and your families a safe and Happy Christmas, and a healthy and prosperous 2012.

John Farnea
Managing Director

PS: For your information we will have some team members having a short break between Christmas and New Year, but please be assured that our support team is here to support you now and over the break. Support will be available during business hours on all working days, including December 28-30

Interfaced versus Integrated …….’The Elephant in the Room’

by Commerce Vision’s Director of Consulting – Andrew Rogencamp
November 23, 2011.

A great way to measure the uptake of eCommerce across the globe is to go to Google and search on eCommerce Solutions. I did it recently and Google came back with 9,240,000 hits in 0.14 seconds.

Whilst there are probably not 9 million eCommerce solutions on the market there are certainly thousands, and here in Australia we come across hundreds.

A common question that we are asked by prospective customers is….’ I want to drive a multi-channel sales and service strategy, connect with my customers 24/7 and open up new markets. How do I provide the same pricing and business rules online as I do through my customer support team who are accessing my PRONTO system?’

This question and the answer that you receive from your eCommerce IT partner is critical to the future success of delivering a true multi-channel sales and service eCommerce solution for your business.

As your IT team will be aware, it is not too difficult to interface to stock master, debtor master and sales order files in your ERP system…….but the proverbial “elephant in the room” is how do we expose all the business, customer, and inventory logic and business rules to your web channel?

The answer is - it is not easy - and coming from an accounting background I always like to do the ‘checks and balances’ test to ensure that a sales order placed on the web is the same as when entered by one of your customer support team. So you will ask what are the ‘checks and balances’ that I should look for when considering which eCommerce solution to choose ….Here’s my checklist:

Are all the complex pricing rules I have set up in PRONTO obeyed on the web?

Can the web obey stock security rules that control which of my customers can buy different products?

Does the sales order created online add up EXACTLY to what it would if it were entered in PRONTO? Price and discount rounding and GST calculations can be different for every ERP system, and even between different versions of the same ERP system.

Can ANY data from PRONTO be integrated and shown to my customers without custom coding to the web application?

Does the integration extend to accounts, order tracking, freight tracking, etc.?

Will the application support future releases of PRONTO? And what will it cost me to keep up to date with PRONTO?

How well does my web team really understand how my business runs on a day to day basis and how this can be exposed to my customers?

In delivering any eCommerce project the ‘elephant will be in the room’. The secret is how to leverage its size and power and not get trampled!

About Andrew Rogencamp

Andrew is the Director of Consulting Services for Commerce Vision and leads a team responsible for implementing Commerce Vision’s eCommerce and mobile commerce solutions. Andrew is a qualified Accountant and has worked implementing ERP and eCommerce solutions across Australia, NZ, UK and US for 25 years.

Andrew can be contacted at andrew.rogencamp@commercevision.com.au or by phone on 07 3188 9898.