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Responsive Design and the Mobile Application Framework

by Commerce Vision's Managing Director - John Farnea
December 13, 2012

We are often asked about responsive design for Web Sites and where our Mobile Application Framework fits in, so we thought we should share the answer in a blog post.

The best way to answer the question is to first look at the two technologies and see what they are trying to achieve .. what problem they are solving.

Responsive Design

The wikipedia definition for responsive design is as follows: “Responsive web design (often abbreviated to RWD) is an approach to web design in which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones)”

What that means is that a site can be designed to change its layout and content based on the attributes of the device it is being rendered on. For example, a web site might be designed with a three column layout for a normal desktop browser, but when viewed on a phone might change its layout to be single column and even remove some of its unnecessary content. This design is responding to the width of the device providing a viewing expenrience on a phone that doesn’t require the user to zoom-in on page content areas or scroll across the page. A great eample of a site designed with responsive design is Smashing Magazine. If you view this site in a wide desktop browser window you will see a four column layout. Shrink your browser width and watch the site change its layout down to a single column when the width is similar to a phone browser window.

Commerce Vision’s Mobile Application Framework

The Mobile Application Framework is a framework that allows us to build Native Look and Feel HTML5 applications for mobile devices. It enables Commerce Vision to build standard applications that can be customised and configured and quickly deployed to our customers. Using the framework we have already built a Mobile Sales Application for Sales Reps, as well as Mobile Customer Self Service for B2B and B2C. These applications look and feel like native mobile applications, with the buttons, list views, controls and animations that we are familiar with from using iPhone and Andriod apps.

With applications built using configurable widgets, the framework supports customisation and configuration of applications, as well as the ability to upgrade apps to consume new features as they are developed by Commerce Vision. The Mobile Application Framework provides the platform required to build, deploy and manage HTML5 applications for mobile devices.

Can Responsive Design and the Mobile Application Framework be used together?

Yes they can. Many of the widgets that we have built in the Mobile Application Framework use responsive design themselves, changing their layout and appearance based on whether they are rendered on a Phone or Tablet device.

So we can see that Responsive Design and the Mobile Application Framework solve two different problems, and can in fact be used together to provide a high standard in mobile applications for your customers

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How fast is your cash travelling?

by Commerce Vision's Director of Sales and Marketing - David Bickerstaff
July 25, 2012

The trading terms we negotiate both with our customers and suppliers has a big impact of the cast flows of our businesses. In most cases, depending on your industry, that typically is around 30 days from invoice, but do you actually track your time to collect, or days sales outstanding (DSOs)?

If you are like many companies you have the potential to increase the velocity of your cash with the resultant increase of working capital for your business. Let’s look at a scenario….

A wholesale distribution company has a turnover of $50m per annum and offers its customers 30 day terms. If we work on the basis of even sales throughout the year, and if they collect their cash in 30 days they would have $50m * 30/365 = $4.1m in accounts receivable at any one time. What are yours?

As we all know for many reasons companies with 30 day terms generally have DSOs of 45 days or greater. Now imagine if you could unlock some of this cash to put back into working capital or perhaps reduce funding costs. The sums look like this…. In this case accounts receivable is now $50m * 45/365 = $6.16m an increase of $2m over your terms. What impact would this have on your working capital needs also with funding costs of say 9% per annum that’s another $180k you could be saving.

The question you might now ask is how do I unlock these savings and release this working capital back into my business. The answer will vary from company to company and will involve a number of activities and improvements of business processes such as better control of receivables, dunning processes on overdue accounts, improved accuracy of the ‘order to cash’ process as well as potentially moving some customers to cash/credit card only. Today many of these activities are well suited to be enabled by eCommerce solutions.

Some of these are:

• Moving customers to your web channel and moving to credit card checkout.
• Messaging services such as order confiormation, advanced shipping notices,
• And of course invoice automation

Over the last 18 months Commerce Vision has continued to invest in solutions that enable ‘order to cash’ and ‘procure to pay’ business processes that can have a material impact on improving the velocity of cash in organisations.

About David Bickerstaff

David is responsible for Sales and Marketing at Commerce Vision and is a qualified CPIM.

Over the last 30 years David has worked with companies across Australia and overseas delivering IT systems to support large and medium business across the manufacturing, distribution and finance sectors including senior roles with Prometheus (now PRONTO), PeopleSoft and SAP.

David can be contacted at david.bickerstaff@commercevision.com.au or by phone on +61418 739 849.

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Are you getting your (unfair) share of the Internet Economy?

by Commerce Vision's Director of Sales and Marketing - David Bickerstaff
March 27, 2012

Hardly a day goes by in our national press without some mention of the internet economy. Some of our captains of industry like Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman at first denied the value of eCommerce and just this week Paul Zahra of David Jones released DJ’s new 3 year strategy which included their move to being omni-channel.

So with all this buzz, I thought it timely to look at some of the predictions of what the near future holds and how our customers plan to get a (unfair) share of the internet economy.

Let’s start with some statistics (see BCG’s report “The $4.2 trillion opportunity” - www.bcg.com).

By 2016 half the world’s population will be connected to the internet – That’s 3 billion people and the value of trade on the net will be $4.2 trillion which will make it the 5th largest economy behind USA, China, Japan and India. Interestingly 4 out of 5 new connections at this time will be mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Here in Australia much of the press focuses on the 2 speed economy but I believe we are actually moving to a 3 speed economy. This third player being companies that are embracing the web to support and drive their businesses - the high web economy.

This third group - the ‘high web’ - are growing over 20% faster than low/no web companies and this will accelerate. In the retail space online retail will grow from today’s $20 billion per annum to $38 billion by 2016 and if we follow other economies such as the US, Japan and Korea - B2B eCommerce will represent 50% of the way business is done.

So the statistics look compelling, now how do you get your share of the action and more? Some thoughts from our team here at Commerce Vision are:

Know your customers and how they like to interact with you

How do you your customers engage with you today. By industry and segment and geography do they prefer to deal with you or are they happy to trade electronically? Do they trade electronically with you but still contact you to access account information and query?

Change Management

Do your customers know that they can trade with you and access account, pricing and product information etc 24/7/365? If not perhaps communicate and reward them for coming online through promotions. Get the message out there that you are open for business via the Web.

Break down the walls

Most of the big corporates use business ERP systems such as SAP, and Oracle. Usually, these organisations are constrained by strict governance around procurement so they just can’t place an order with you without a PO. Today some will want to “punch out” to you to get pricing and then trade with you electronically. Your ‘Customer Self Service’ site allows “punch out” – some of our customers receive over 20% of their orders this way.

Website and SEO

Does your website portray the image of who you are? Are you getting the ‘hits’ on search engines such as Google? Commerce Vision works with professionals in this area to maximise the return of your investment.

And finally ... Develop a Web Channel Strategy

How does the Web fit with your channels to market? Does it support your customers whether they are consumers, business or distributors? Are you able to reach new industries and geographies both nationally and globally?

For some more thoughts on where the internet is going and a primer for developing your web channel strategy, you may also like to listen to Kevin Kelly’s disposition on the next 5000 days of the Web back in late 2007. http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html

About David Bickerstaff

David is responsible for Sales and Marketing at Commerce Vision and is a qualified CPIM.

Over the last 30 years David has worked with companies across Australia and overseas delivering IT systems to support large and medium business across the manufacturing, distribution and finance sectors including senior roles with Prometheus (now PRONTO), PeopleSoft and SAP.

David can be contacted at david.bickerstaff@commercevision.com.au or by phone on +61418 739 849.

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What’s in a (Domain) name?

by Commerce Vision's Director of Customer Services - Troy Brady
February 21, 2012

Your company’s Domain name is a key part of your Corporate branding, and warrants appropriate protection, and administration.

Each year at least one of our customers will accidentally let their Domain name expire. Here is some background and ways to avoid this happening to you.

Once a Domain registration expires you no longer own the Domain and all associated DNS entries, Web Sites, and e-mail will cease to function. There is a brief grace period wherein you are given the option to renew an expired Domain for up to 2 weeks after expiration, but after that period it is available for anyone else to register.

Every year, all accredited domain registrars are required by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), to remind domain registrants to review their contact details for their Domain name(s), and make any changes necessary to ensure accuracy.

If you have not been contacted by your domain registrar then your contact details may be incorrect, allowing for the possibility that you will miss the domain renewal and expiry warning emails. It may be as simple as the staff member who registered your domain all those years ago now longer works for your company, or you have had changes to your email addresses or company structure.

There are simple tools available on the web to lookup all registered domains and check your contact details. It takes only a few minutes and could save your company days of downtime if your domain name expires.

Domain name information can be checked using registrar WHOIS utilities such as www.melbourneit.com.au/cc/whois/index

If you have any questions regarding domains please contact Troy Brady for more information.

Troy Brady
Director of Customer Services
Commerce Vision Pty Ltd
troy.brady@commercevision.com.au
ph: 0419 647 407

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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

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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.