NETSTORE Software Module

IBS NetStore is an e-business application that provides you with fast, easy, low-cost access to new markets. It gives your customers immediate answers for order-related questions, thanks to its complete integration with IBS Enterprise or your ERP system.

HIGHLIGHTS of Features & Benefits
• Exploit the full market potential of the Internet
• Connect your customers and sales force directly to your ERP system
• Be available to your customers around the clock, worldwide
• Take orders more effectively
• Provide a channel for self-service via the web.

CUSTOMER FUNCTIONS ON THE WEBSITE

PRODUCT CATALOG
Present an unlimited number of product catalogs on the Internet. Show, for example, various catalogs for products in your standard assortment and for campaigns or more specific catalogs for customer buying groups. Another alternative is to create a top-ten product catalog that details your most frequently purchased products.

Your customers can either browse through the product catalogs or use the search function to find the items. You can easily structure and group products into different categories (as well as sub-catalogs) within each catalog. These can hold an infinite number of categories and products, and you can build sub-levels for either categories or products. Several presentation styles are available to present these in various manners, such as a tree structure that dynamically expands as the visitor clicks through the hierarchy. The catalogs can also be arranged in simple ways, such as alphabetically.

Images and thumbnails further enhance the visual appeal and ordering process, and visitors can have access to pertinent information and news.

Users can also toggle between standard and advanced search modes. Standard mode contains only a few search option fields, to enable quick and easy searches. The advanced mode includes additional fields, as well as an AND/OR option and the choice to exclude values.

ENHANCED PRODUCT INFORMATION
Basic product data is shown in real-time, such as by price unit, volume and weight. The quick attachment of text, images, video, PDF files, sound, animations and URL web links to a product is also a simple matter. Other features also enable:

Sales price calculation – Calculate price based on customer, date, quantity, unit and currency.

Warehouse information – Display available quantities for every product in either all of your warehouses or only the web client's authorized warehouse.

Item comparison – Items and item information can be displayed side-by-side to make it easier for the user to compare items. Item comparison can be launched either from the search result in Product Search or from a product catalog.

Show availability – Present your customers with delivery commitments based on present and future stock availability.

Order line entry – Immediately create sales order lines without leaving the product catalog. Customers simply select your products, enter the desired quantity and click the Buy button. The shopping cart constantly keeps track of the line items and order total.

Mouse over image to enlarge.
(IE 7x users can print enlarged picture by by right-clicking on it » "Print Picture…")
Shopping lists speed up the ordering process.

SALES ORDER ENTRY
Your customers can enter order lines that include quantities, units, requested delivery dates etc. Credit information, default delivery warehouses and delivery addresses are all presented to the customer.

Credit check, product availability and price calculations are automatically determined by IBS Enterprise or your ERP system. The visible shopping cart continuously presents the customer with the order status, which includes the total amount and number of order lines.

When checking out, customers may also make payment with a credit card, once this has been attached to their user profile.

User can register an order without signing on. A user with an ID can sign on at any time during the process to access customized prices, etc. If the user doesn't have an ID and password, the order will still be registered and a temporary order number created, although they will need to key in shipping address, payment information, etc. If the payment method is credit card, the number series is validated. An online authorization is run later.

Order lines may be entered in several ways:

• By using the available Catalog views
• By product search
• By keying products directly into the 'ADD order form panel', entering product code, unit, quantity, requested delivery date and shipment marking
• By adding products to an order by copying previous orders

PRODUCT SEARCH
Customers can search for products with free-text search, based on product code or description. A number of other product-related fields, from the item file, allow for pull-down search filter criteria. You can even enter your own 'alias' labels to these fields; when the product is found, your customers can easily gain browsing access to your product catalogs.

PERSONAL SHOPPING LIST
IBS NetStore supports shopping lists, which ease the work for users who frequently enter similar orders. For instance, a web customer can create named lists of the most frequently purchased products. A shopping list can also be a useful tool when planning future purchases; for example, weekly lists can be added beforehand and used whenever needed.

SELF-SERVICE AND PERSONALIZATION
Order entry, account information and product catalogs are some of the cornerstones of a web-shop solution. Customers generate business value by actually doing a lot of your work – entering and tracking orders, finding information, checking stock availability, and so forth, which lowers your transaction costs.

The software allows your customers to handle much of the administrative work related to their own web accounts, such as:

• Request a web user account for existing IBS Enterprise customer profiles
• Request a customer account in IBS Enterprise and a web user account
• Change web user attributes, including user description, email address and language, etc

INTERRUPTED ORDERS
Temporary orders that have been interrupted are automatically updated when accessed by web users, in terms of stock availability, prices and sourcing.

ORDER SEARCH
Your customers and sales force gain 24/7 access to important information. Order shipment searches and actual order information – down to detailed order lines, shipment information, prices and discounts, weight, volume and references – are all readily available. Via the shipping agent's URL, users can also track shipment progress. Once an order is recorded in IBS Enterprise, customers can copy or paste information into their host systems.

QUOTATION SEARCH
IBS NetStore also includes the possibility to search for quotations. The customer uses the quotation number as a search criterion, and the result presented includes quotation header and lines.

CUSTOMER REQUESTS
Your customers can enter, view and delete requests through IBS NetStore. A request could be anything from an incident report, a request for quotation or product information to marketing collateral. If the request relates to a late order, for instance, the order number and concerned items can be linked to the request.

Mouse over image to enlarge.
(IE 7x users can print enlarged picture by by right-clicking on it » "Print Picture…")
Comparing items side by side makes it easier to choose.

Web-based requests open up yet another channel for enhanced customer interaction, enabling your customers to enter requests themselves and follow up on the status. This is not only helpful from a CRM perspective, but further reduces the load on your staff.

ACCOUNT INFORMATION
Provide your customers and sales-force with information regarding account status including balance, credit and outstanding payments. You can limit and omit transactions from the inquiry on a document-type level and allow customers access to their A/R agreements.

MESSAGES AND NEWS
Individual and generic messages to your customers can be sent to your customers, who access these via the label 'Messages label' on their log-in pages. Under the News label, they are also able to see product news.

CUSTOMER CONFIGURATION
To further optimize IBS NetStore, customers can personalize the application by customizing the general design and the information provided to them. This configuration feature, together with the design option (see section below), offers your customers a high degree of user friendliness and an application with an interactive look and feel.

PASSWORD HANDLING
Customers can change their own passwords via the IBS NetStore start page. Should they forget this code, the system is able to automatically send a password to the secure email address that has been predefined in the back-office system.

CREATING AND ADMINISTRATING YOUR WEBSITE

INTERNET SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION
You can customize your IBS NetStore web pages by using any HTML editor. Predefined tools let you create links and add background sounds, images and text, with options for news and messages. You can also set default values for smart sales order handling.

Data restrictions and other settings can be applied to a whole user group rather than on an individual user basis.

It is also possible to define group level settings for:

• Catalogs and categories
• Items
• Order types
• Online text messages
• Whether an order confirmation or deletion should be confirmed or not
• Languages supported

When it comes to language handling, a customer's profile determines their default language. At any log-on, however, users can switch to any language that has been activated for the IBS NetStore site.

IBS statistics tools help you keep track of visitors to your website. Determine the number of visits, last visit, average session or transactions per hour of each customer, or a combination of all criteria.

Using the load-balancing feature, you can distribute the transaction workload on your system to many internal server instances, or even physical computers.

INTERNET PRODUCT FUNCTIONS
IBS provides you with tools for creating both product catalogs and categories. Once a catalog is created and organized, you can easily add and arrange products into different categories. Images, text, video, animations and sound can be attached to each individual product, as well as entire catalogs or categories.

INTERNET ORDER FUNCTIONS
There is an administration and approval tool for incoming web orders that have not been directly added to the sales order file in IBS Enterprise. The Internet sales order can, depending on the web client set-up, automatically update the IBS Enterprise sales order file, or be held in web order control for later validation and release. The sales order workflow depends on how each individual customer has been classified.

SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION
IBS NetStore sessions are managed through the use of the system administration tool. This can include tracking which sessions are up and running or inactive. Besides sending messages to individual of groups of users, the system administrator can also shut down and restart IBS NetStore for updating or maintenance.

TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS

ADMINISTRATORS
IBS NetStore administrators can select and group users with the same status, such as 'Not Active' or 'New Customer'. Collective actions for a group – for example, Disable, Enable, Approve, or Reject, together with sending group emails – can then be taken.

JAVA-COMPLIANT PLATFORM
The architecture of IBS NetStore is object-oriented and developed in Java. This means it can run on any Java-compliant platform.

COOKIES

IBS NetStore uses cookies to:
• Load interrupted, temporary orders registered by sundry users
• Recall what language the user used at last log-on
• Recall user IDs, so that users need only enter their password

Notification of the use of cookies is provided, as stipulated by law in certain countries.

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
The recommended configuration when implementing IBS NetStore is the WebSphere Application Server (WAS) Standard Edition, and IBM HTTP server as the web-server. However, IBS NetStore comes with a built-in connection pool mechanism and does not rely on any WebSphere-specific functions. This ensures the software's platform and supplier independence.

CONNECTION TO ERP SYSTEMS
IBS NetStore comes with a readymade connector to IBS Enterprise but can also run under other ERP systems.

SECURITY FUNCTIONS
An extensive set of security features comes standard with IBS NetStore. All web pages can be sign-on enabled and activated/deactivated, even per user. SSL-enabled (secure socket layer) options for every single page guarantee that no one can access or alter the data transferred between your customer's browser and your web server.

Security classes can be created for web pages, catalogs/categories and functions, and then applied to different users or groups. This means you can establish which products a customer or group is permitted to buy, or the information that should be available for a specific customer or group.

Contact IBS for more information. »