VetMall.com is based entirely on Microsoft technologies, including the BackOffice Family and Microsoft Visual Studio®. "We had in-house experience with Microsoft Windows NT®, and we liked the integration of development tools and the way Microsoft technologies are easily deployed," says Liao.
Phase two, in development now, connects the veterinarians to the distributor. "Vets will be able to better communicate with their distributors and conduct business," says Miller. "They can offer products directly to their clients without storage or inventory costs. Distributors will be able to accurately forecast inventory needs, reducing warehousing costs. VetMall will also provide order receiving capabilities, e-mail accounts, Accounts Payable/Receivable functions, account tracking and maintenance, and advertising to the veterinarians."
Phase three will extend VetMall.com's reach by including the manufacturing community. VetMall will serve as the marketplace for manufacturers to receive orders from the distributors, negotiate pricing, and plan production for their products.
"We wanted to provide a simple way for manufacturers and distributors to join in VetMall, and we see XML documents as a better way than COM to ease the pain of EDI," says Liao. "Using BizTalk, they can send us their transaction format and we can facilitate e-commerce transactions by providing the mapping and pushing it back out."
VetMall uses the Commerce Interchange Pipeline component of Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition, which supports XML, to facilitate data exchange over the Internet. Their four Windows NT Server–based servers and Microsoft SQL Server™–based databases are hosted by Data Return Corporation, a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider and specialist in advanced hosting services for the Microsoft platform. "Our Integration Server is our communications vehicle, which communicates with an Integration Server at Butler," says Liao. "When we get an order from a veterinarian, we wrap the XML document with Microsoft Message Queuing and push it to Butler's Integration Server. It doesn't matter how often they sweep their server, the orders will be queued up waiting to go.
"We believe SQL Server 7.0 Enterprise Edition is infinitely scalable, so that as we grow we can plug in as many machines as we need," continues Liao. "We really like the auto memory feature, which reduces our overhead."
Monday, February 11, 2008
Linking the Key Players
Desktop Corporation began creating VetMall.com by determining the key partners needed to field a best of breed solution. "We expect to have most of the 46,000 vets at 26,000 clinics in the U.S. on board," says Mark Morrison, director of Marketing at VetMall.com. "The key to this was selecting the best distribution partner to handle fulfillment, returns and relationships with the vets and we did that when we reached an agreement with The Butler Company—the only nationwide distributor dealing exclusively with the veterinary industry."
Upon reaching an agreement with Butler, Desktop began phase one of VetMall in March 1999, by connecting veterinarians with consumers on the Internet. "VetMall is unique in that it allows an individual veterinarian to develop a Web site using a simple wizard," says Morrison. "These sites showcase local information provided by the veterinarian, but also feature rich content provided by leading organizations in the vet industry, as well as interactive areas for children and educational information about pets and farm and ranch animals."
VetMall plans to leverage the relationship between the veterinarian and his/her clients to create traffic on the site. Says Morrison, "We believe that the consumer will enjoy greater value from purchasing products from a source they trust, their veterinarian."
VetMall launched the e-commerce portion of the site on October 1, 1999, offering more than 3,500 products for sale. "The key to supporting the existing pipeline is the fact that the local veterinarian will receive a margin on all products sold through the site. One of the interesting things about this marketplace is that vets are the only medical professionals who are authorized to prescribe and dispense products through their clinics directly to their customers," says Morrison. "Currently VetMall.com is the only online marketplace for this. We are not just selling dog food and play toys like other dot-coms out there."
Upon reaching an agreement with Butler, Desktop began phase one of VetMall in March 1999, by connecting veterinarians with consumers on the Internet. "VetMall is unique in that it allows an individual veterinarian to develop a Web site using a simple wizard," says Morrison. "These sites showcase local information provided by the veterinarian, but also feature rich content provided by leading organizations in the vet industry, as well as interactive areas for children and educational information about pets and farm and ranch animals."
VetMall plans to leverage the relationship between the veterinarian and his/her clients to create traffic on the site. Says Morrison, "We believe that the consumer will enjoy greater value from purchasing products from a source they trust, their veterinarian."
VetMall launched the e-commerce portion of the site on October 1, 1999, offering more than 3,500 products for sale. "The key to supporting the existing pipeline is the fact that the local veterinarian will receive a margin on all products sold through the site. One of the interesting things about this marketplace is that vets are the only medical professionals who are authorized to prescribe and dispense products through their clinics directly to their customers," says Morrison. "Currently VetMall.com is the only online marketplace for this. We are not just selling dog food and play toys like other dot-coms out there."
Updating the Traditional Pipeline
The pipeline that VetMall.com integrates may be traditional, but the technologies it employs are anything but. VetMall is using BizTalk, an e-commerce framework based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) that makes it easy for organizations to integrate applications and do business over the Web regardless of platform, operating system, or underlying technology.
"It has been incredibly difficult for companies to easily conduct business over the Internet due to the lack of a single technical vocabulary for describing business data and processes," says Ken Liao, chief technology officer at VetMall. "When Microsoft came out with the whole idea of the BizTalk framework using XML documents, it was exactly what we needed for VetMall.com."
Although VetMall.com was in the development stage long before BizTalk came out, Desktop was quick to go with a new technology that mirrored its concept so completely. Says Liao, "We started hearing about the overall idea behind the BizTalk framework and BizTalk Server, and it just happened our direction coincided directly with Microsoft's concept of this product. It was a great match for us."
"It has been incredibly difficult for companies to easily conduct business over the Internet due to the lack of a single technical vocabulary for describing business data and processes," says Ken Liao, chief technology officer at VetMall. "When Microsoft came out with the whole idea of the BizTalk framework using XML documents, it was exactly what we needed for VetMall.com."
Although VetMall.com was in the development stage long before BizTalk came out, Desktop was quick to go with a new technology that mirrored its concept so completely. Says Liao, "We started hearing about the overall idea behind the BizTalk framework and BizTalk Server, and it just happened our direction coincided directly with Microsoft's concept of this product. It was a great match for us."
Microsoft Technology: Flexibility and Choice
The Business Internet is not a rigid approach. The idea is to give companies choices: choice of devices, choice of networks, choice of services, and choice of the right partners to develop solutions that connect them to customers, to other businesses, and to their employees. While technology can't provide a complete answer to all the problems businesses face, companies can make progress toward their goals by deploying solutions built on Microsoft technology.
The Microsoft platform, with Microsoft Windows at its core, offers several key advantages to organizations developing Internet-based business solutions. It can provide a complete technology infrastructure by enabling business functions to operate seamlessly from one end of the company to the other. You also don't have to rely exclusively on Microsoft software. Microsoft products are designed to work with your company's existing systems so you can mix and match Microsoft and non-Microsoft software when building end-to-end solutions. This means you don't have to throw away the significant investments you have already made in hardware, software, and training. Applications built on the Microsoft platform are also designed to be flexible enough to evolve and adapt to meet changing business conditions. The result is solutions that are easier to manage and maintain, more familiar to your workforce, more flexible, and less expensive to operate.
The Microsoft platform, with Microsoft Windows at its core, offers several key advantages to organizations developing Internet-based business solutions. It can provide a complete technology infrastructure by enabling business functions to operate seamlessly from one end of the company to the other. You also don't have to rely exclusively on Microsoft software. Microsoft products are designed to work with your company's existing systems so you can mix and match Microsoft and non-Microsoft software when building end-to-end solutions. This means you don't have to throw away the significant investments you have already made in hardware, software, and training. Applications built on the Microsoft platform are also designed to be flexible enough to evolve and adapt to meet changing business conditions. The result is solutions that are easier to manage and maintain, more familiar to your workforce, more flexible, and less expensive to operate.
Introducing The Business Internet
However, this opportunity also creates challenges. Business managers today are faced with the necessity of making a dizzying array of technology decisions. Their job isn't made any easier by information overkill. Open up the pages of any business publication and you will be bombarded with ads for e-commerce, e-business, and e-services. All of the messages can become confusing and overwhelming. Business managers need information that is useful and easy to understand so that they can make decisions quickly, and be confident that their choices will help their organizations transform the promise of the Internet into practical business realities.
There is no question that many companies today—whatever their size and industry—face several common business imperatives. They want to become more focused on their customers. They want to attract and maintain the best workforce possible and give their employees the tools to succeed. They want to maintain flexible internal infrastructures that allow their organizations to adapt quickly and effectively to changing market conditions. There is little debate over the need to evolve and adapt; the real question is how to achieve this goal.
That's where The Business Internet comes in. It has a straightforward aim: Make the Internet a part of everyday business operations with a combination of software, services, and expertise. Companies of all sizes should have the ability to move processes online, connect to suppliers and partners, understand and respond better to their customers, and empower their employees with the quick delivery of critical business information.
There is no question that many companies today—whatever their size and industry—face several common business imperatives. They want to become more focused on their customers. They want to attract and maintain the best workforce possible and give their employees the tools to succeed. They want to maintain flexible internal infrastructures that allow their organizations to adapt quickly and effectively to changing market conditions. There is little debate over the need to evolve and adapt; the real question is how to achieve this goal.
That's where The Business Internet comes in. It has a straightforward aim: Make the Internet a part of everyday business operations with a combination of software, services, and expertise. Companies of all sizes should have the ability to move processes online, connect to suppliers and partners, understand and respond better to their customers, and empower their employees with the quick delivery of critical business information.
Give It Away—And Watch Use Grow
Significantly, Sainsbury's is making the EQOS system available to suppliers free of charge, reiterating the company's commitment to improving customer service and to the VCI. Rowe says, "Our supply chain is increasingly being organized in a virtual way. This brings huge benefits but relies on information support systems that are integrated across company boundaries. We see Microsoft's vision of VCI as the motorway, a road on which we need to drive to get information moving around between companies."
Sainsbury's has given its top 25 suppliers licenses to EQOS Collaborator and will soon have its top 1,000 suppliers online. These suppliers are so happy with the system that many are recommending that their other customers use it as well.
And EQOS Collaborator is useful for far more than promotions. EQOS Systems has tailored versions of the solution for managing product introductions, product returns, delivery slot bookings, product lifecycles, and forecasting. Virtually any function that deals with coordination across a supply chain is fair game. Non-retail applications EQOS Systems is targeting include public administration, transportation, even finance.
Concludes Quinn, "Sainsbury's has taken an important lead in shaping collaborative information systems. There's no limit to what can be done with co-managed and cross-functional collaboration. Microsoft's underlying e-commerce technologies are moving this whole industry ahead very quickly."
Sainsbury's has given its top 25 suppliers licenses to EQOS Collaborator and will soon have its top 1,000 suppliers online. These suppliers are so happy with the system that many are recommending that their other customers use it as well.
And EQOS Collaborator is useful for far more than promotions. EQOS Systems has tailored versions of the solution for managing product introductions, product returns, delivery slot bookings, product lifecycles, and forecasting. Virtually any function that deals with coordination across a supply chain is fair game. Non-retail applications EQOS Systems is targeting include public administration, transportation, even finance.
Concludes Quinn, "Sainsbury's has taken an important lead in shaping collaborative information systems. There's no limit to what can be done with co-managed and cross-functional collaboration. Microsoft's underlying e-commerce technologies are moving this whole industry ahead very quickly."
Good News for Suppliers
In another situation, Oscar Mayer—in the U.K., a supplier of Sainsbury's brand of ready-made meals such as lasagne and curries—used Collaborator to spot a looming shortage of its meals in Sainsbury's stores during a promotion, and to also spot a huge supply languishing in a nearby warehouse. The Oscar Mayer supply chain team could direct warehoused meals immediately to Sainsbury's stores, where customers devoured them. Collaborator's intervention meant 300 cases of perishable meals were sold rather than left to spoil.
Rowe says, "With the EQOS system, we can circulate information and knowledge very quickly. Now that several of our suppliers have started to use it, there seems to be an increasing thirst for data that can improve decision-making. The good news for consumers is that they will get the product they want."
Sainsbury's can also place new lines of goods, as well as product promotions, in stores in a much shorter time. Quantities can be predicted and managed much more accurately, whereas before, there was difficulty in matching correct stock-to-demand ratios. Rowe says, "Now we can co-manage forecasts with our suppliers, whereas previously we worked in isolation. Branded suppliers will have a far better idea about the impact of advertising, promotions they are running, and so on, so we can update our forecasts of their products on a continuous basis."
Another hidden benefit that the customer may not see is the ability to pass on consumer comment to suppliers in a quick and efficient manner. Rowe says, "We will be able to pass on consumer dislikes, comments, and desire much more efficiently. Previously, the paperwork was a bit of a nightmare, and the feedback loop was complex. With Collaborator, we can now focus on responding to customers quickly."
Rowe says, "With the EQOS system, we can circulate information and knowledge very quickly. Now that several of our suppliers have started to use it, there seems to be an increasing thirst for data that can improve decision-making. The good news for consumers is that they will get the product they want."
Sainsbury's can also place new lines of goods, as well as product promotions, in stores in a much shorter time. Quantities can be predicted and managed much more accurately, whereas before, there was difficulty in matching correct stock-to-demand ratios. Rowe says, "Now we can co-manage forecasts with our suppliers, whereas previously we worked in isolation. Branded suppliers will have a far better idea about the impact of advertising, promotions they are running, and so on, so we can update our forecasts of their products on a continuous basis."
Another hidden benefit that the customer may not see is the ability to pass on consumer comment to suppliers in a quick and efficient manner. Rowe says, "We will be able to pass on consumer dislikes, comments, and desire much more efficiently. Previously, the paperwork was a bit of a nightmare, and the feedback loop was complex. With Collaborator, we can now focus on responding to customers quickly."
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