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An increasing number of independent retailers, suppliers, distributors and manufacturers have one or more computers connected to the internet on their premises. SupplyLinks™
is a web enabled ordering system that allows customers to place orders
with their suppliers over the internet. SupplyLinks™ is ideally suited to suppliers distributing products to independent retailers or to a mixture of their own and independent retailers and is designed to be flexible enough to be used at any level in the supply chain. Suppliers using conventional computer based ordering systems often have to re-enter orders placed by phone or fax. Taking orders over the internet means that the customer is entering the order, removing the requirement to re-enter it, which can be time consuming and error prone. Customers can place order at their convenience and can track the progress of these orders. SupplyLinks™ holds order and customer account information securely in the suppliers' database. This has a number of benefits to the supplier and customer, (the term customer can apply to a retailer, manufacturer or supplier using SupplyLinks™ to place orders). Customer benefits:
Supplier benefits:
SupplyLinks™ is a web enabled internet hosted system and as such the customer and supplier will not require any specialist hardware or software. The SupplyLinks™ user interfaces will run in any up-to-date browser on a PC connected to the internet. As an internet hosted system SupplyLinks™ can be hosted off the supplier's premises. This has a number of advantages:
The SupplyLinks™ Portal is the user interface accessed by customers when placing orders with their suppliers. In order to use the SupplyLinks™ Portal the customer must first register as a SupplyLinks™ user and select the suppliers with whom they wish to place orders. Requests to setup an account will be sent to the suppliers who can accept or reject the request. Once a suppliers has setup the customers account the customer will be able to access the SupplyLinks™ site for that supplier. The SupplyLinks™ Portal allows a customer to use the SupplyLinks™ system to place orders with any subscribing suppliers in their market sector. SupplyLinks™ Admin is the interface used by the supplier to setup customer accounts, maintain the product catalogue and control other site content. SupplyLinks™ provides support for existing ordering channels such as telesales and fax through the SupplyLinks™ Central interface. SupplyLinks™ Central allows sales staff on the suppliers' premises to enter orders taken over the phone or by fax into the SupplyLinks™ database. SupplyLinks Remote is a web enabled Windows application which runs on laptop computers. It has been designed to enable sales representatives to take orders 'offline' while at a customer site. Each time SupplyLinks™ Remote connects to the SupplyLinks™ Central site it will synchronize its database downloading any orders and uploading changes to products, customers etc; SupplyLinks™ allows suppliers to setup their own product categories to help to organize their product range. Customers will be able to view products by category as well as by performing specific searches on product name and description. Stock levels can be maintained against each product in the catalogue. SupplyLinks™ can be configured to reject orders if they exceed the current stock level, or inform the customer that the product will not be available until a specified date. When the supplier knows stock will be available on a future date this information can be entered using the SupplyLinks™ Admin interface. Suppliers can setup their own order tracking statuses to allow them, or their customers, to monitor the progress of an order. Customers can be automatically notified of changes of order status by email. Suppliers can setup customer specific prices; this can be done at country, region or individual customer level. Promotions can also be assigned to products for customer groups or individual customers. SupplyLinks™ will allow prices to be setup in different currencies. These prices can be setup as fixed prices or can be calculated against a base currency using current exchange rates. SupplyLinks™ supports the use of multiple languages making it an ideal choice for suppliers selling internationally. Customers can print orders details on a printer connected to their PC. Dispatch notes and reports can be printed by the supplier from the SupplyLinks™ Central interface. Each customer using the SupplyLinks™ system has their own customer account. It is possible set a maximum order size and outstanding balance limit on each account. SupplyLinks™ can be configured to prompt the suppliers' sales staff if a customer has not placed an order within a configurable time period. Customers can be prompted if they have failed to reorder a frequently ordered product or have not taken up a promotional offer. Customers can set up lists of frequently ordered products. These lists can then be used as the basis for a new order. Previous orders can be viewed and used when setting up new orders. On entering a suppliers' site the customer will be presented with news and sales related information. This area of the site can be used to keep the customer up-to-date with the latest product news such as the launching of new lines, product recalls, promotions etc; A download area is available where suppliers can place resources such as images to be displayed on customer web sites or electronic copies of promotional literature. Data is held in a password protected Windows 2000 database. All access to SupplyLinks™ web sites uses a 128 bit encrypted SSL connection. Each supplier has their own database. The web sites will not be submitted to search engines and will be configured to discourage search engine web robots which could otherwise add the URL to their indexes. All user documentation and online help is available to customers on their SupplyLinks™ Web Site. If as a supplier you already hold data in an electronic catalogue we can assist you in integrating this catalogue with your SupplyLinks™ catalogue. We can also provide assistance in integrating SupplyLinks™ with your existing stock control systems. If a supplier already holds catalogue data electronically we will be able to assist in migrating this data into SupplyLinks™. Your SupplyLinks™ system will be hosted by a reputable web hosting company who specialize in the provision of Windows 2000 hosting systems that support the Microsoft .NET Framework. We are currently using Netcetera. The SupplyLinks™ Portal, SupplyLinks™ Central and SupplyLinks™ Admin are all Microsoft ASP.NET applications developed using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. SupplyLinks™ Remote is a Windows application also developed using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. SupplyLinks™ uses Microsoft SQL Server 2000 databases providing high levels of performance and reliability. SupplyLinks™ will be available from May 2004. If you are interested in using SupplyLinks before then please contact us for information on joining our beta trail scheme at SupplyLinks@jrahcomputing.co.uk.
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Site
Design by JRAH Computing Ltd.
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| Sheffield
Web Site Development Sheffield ecommerce Sheffield Database design Sheffield database development Sheffield software development |
