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Internet Services
A Tale of Two Systems
Traditionally, this is how you'd use fulfillment services. You'd send in your materials to the company's warehouse, and immediately 2 sets of books were started, yours and theirs. You kept your set of records of receipts and the fulfillment services company kept theirs. Periodically, you'd ask for reports and match up their activities with yours, not unlike the fun you experience balancing a checkbook.
The same went for orders you'd place. Maybe you would call in some, send in others by mail, or you'd have response coupons sent directly to the fulfillment house to be put into their system by data entry operators. You had little control over how these orders were handled, having no idea how important you were in the company's scheme of things. You waited for your order activity reports to arrive each month. Maybe you had to call to remind them to send them. It was sort of like bowling, but not finding out your score until a month later. By then you might be out of stock on items. It was a dicey thing to rely on the figures you received for usage, status, and turnaround times. You did the best you could in an imperfect world.
Aspects of this method improved when email and web shopping carts arrived. The front end time was shortened, and orders got there faster; but they went into the same black hole every time. By itself, the internet improved only the front part of fulfillment ordering.
Enter the Electronic Back End
Powerful programming techniques, developed for the Internet, have changed everything. Instead of a shopping cart "in the sky," you can now have your own internet "Control Center" where you are literally connected to the operation that was once a black box. When your materials arrive, you can be automatically notified by email, with a hyperlink that will take you to the receiving transaction details directly in the fulfillment service company's warehouse management system. When an order is placed on the internet, you, as an administrator have immediate access to that order in all of its processing stages.
Take a look at some of these features of our internet services:
- You are the administrator of your own internet "Control Center," and you decide what level of control you want. You can...
- Set up users. You can have all grades of users, from pre-registered to anonymous.
- Design screen views. You can have as many "views" or "looks" to your ordering site, different ones for different users.
- Set up your inventory. You can make kits, or name your products, create offers.
- ...or you can let us do this for you.
- You have access to a "real time" system. When your "world" is created in our system, you have access to it around the clock, from anywhere you can get to the internet. Updates to inventory and orders are recorded in the system as they happen. You can track these yourself, or you can have the system notify you or your customers when events occur.
- You reap the benefits of enormous flexibility here:
- You can create your own on line reports (take a look at a what's available) in various formats (PDF, Excel 8.0, Rich Text). You can take the data and upload it into your own systems.
- You decide which users get which offers. You can set limits on the amounts users order---even have an email come to you if someone is trying to over-order.
- You can have your users' screen views linked to your own web site to set a consistent theme.
What would seamless integration of your fulfillment processes-- without giving up flexibility, access, and control-- mean to your organization?
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For all of the above services:
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