A powerful tool: Examples of enhanced, streamlined operations through e-commerce.

• Author: Kronemyer, Bob
• Position: E-Business - Electronic commerce - Brief Article

"Electronic commerce is a powerful tool for business transformation that allows companies to enhance and streamline their operations," says Ed Simcox Jr., president and CEO at Saurian Technologies Inc. in Indianapolis. "Uses of e-commerce include supply-chain optimization and the sales of goods online, as well as internal automation of back-office tasks."

Advance Mixer, a mid-size Fort Wayne manufacturer of concrete mixers, has a client extranet that permits customers to access real-time status of custom vehicles in production. "Instead of having to call the company during specified hours to find out where a particular vehicle is in the production cycle, customers can now log into a secure site with a user name and password," says Matt Nickols, CEO at Internet consultant Cirrus ABS Corp. in Fort Wayne.

Cirrus ABS has also created a "used-truck store" for the sale of previously owned concrete mixers, similar to classified advertising. "In the future, our client hopes to allow customers to post other kinds of heavy equipment for sale," Nickols says.

A sales-force automation application has also been implemented to configure new orders. "Through the Internet, the remote sales force can now connect up and synchronize all their data from around the country into one central location," Nickols notes. "This helps manage sales proposals, sales orders and sales forecasting." Files containing pictures of vehicles can also be downloaded. Furthermore, the customer Web site has return-on-investment calculators. For example, one may ask how much he or she will save by purchasing a front-discharge mixer as opposed to a rear-discharge mixer. With the average mixer costing about $135,000, anything Advance Mixer can do to provide meaningful information to the customer will likely increase the sales closure rate.

Over the past year, Saurian Technologies has significantly enhanced the Web presence of a small, privately owned Hoosier company that sells travel and entertainment packages. Within nine months, Web-based sales for the firm skyrocketed from 1 percent to 65 percent of total sales. "We've been able to successfully reduce inventory levels by directly linking the company to its vendors over the Internet," Simcox notes. "We've also created an online marketplace and reverse auction whereby products can be purchased at the spot price or the price can be bid down by the sellers." These transactions are protected by three levels of security, including...