Business-to-Business Internet Marketing, Fourth Edition - Lifecycle ...

Order E-fulfillment and Distributing
Live Products Over the Internet
Executing E-fulfillment 189
Order e-fulfillment is crucial to the success of any e-commerce operation.
It appears, however, that for many companies, e-fulfilling orders is
no easy task. In May 2000, Bain & Company in association with Mainspring
issued a series of studies that suggested order e-fulfillment needed
to be significantly improved. During Mother’s Day 2000, the studies
said, as many as 30% of all orders were unfulfilled.
The ultimate in instant gratification is when a customer can receive
a live product online. Entire companies are being built around
the concept of electronic product delivery—some at the outset, and
some because they have no choice. Consider the case of Egghead, a
company that, at its high point, sold software in 250 retail stores. Then,
on the verge of bankruptcy in January 1998, Egghead announced it
would close its remaining 80 stores, change its name to Egghead.com,
and move its entire sales operation to the Web. The company literally
reinvented itself as an online merchant and aggressively marketed its
products through affiliate programs. Egghead.com offered a discount
software superstore, a computer products superstore, an online liquidation
center, and online auctions at its heavily trafficked site. In July
1999, Egghead.com merged with Internet rival Onsale.com
(www.onsale.com) in a deal valued at $400 million. But in 2001, the
company declared bankruptcy.
Although endless numbers of companies are selling and delivering
software via the Internet, more than a few are inventing entirely new
ways to fulfill their customers. CyberMedia (www.mcafee.com/
cybermedia) was so successful at it, they were purchased by the McAfee
Software Division of Network Associates. CyberMedia saw the potential
of e-fulfillment and created a novel product called Oil Change, which
has become a software bestseller. You install Oil Change on your PC
and it checks the software you have, goes on the Internet, and finds,
downloads, and installs the appropriate updates, patches, and bug fixes
for more than 6,500 software programs. Oil Change costs less than $50
and is continually updated via the Internet on a subscription basis for a
few dollars a year. It could represent a new class of facilitating software
that will make the Internet all the more useful for the businessperson
and consumer alike.