ICT and e-Business Impact in the Furniture Industry - empirica

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ICT and e-business impact in the furniture industry5.5.2 e-Business activityWebsite developmentQuator’s website was launched two months after the store opened. The aim was tocommunicate on the store by publishing a catalogue online. Thanks to the capacities ofone of the four associates, the first three versions of the website were designed internally,allowing lower cost and better flexibility.From the very beginning, the PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor suited for dynamic websites)and MySQL (data base) open source technologies were used. After five months, thewebsite initially developed in HTML was adapted according to XHTML (markup language)and CSS (stylesheet language) standards, which allowed better web ranking thanks to asplit between content (recognised by search engines) and graphic elements. Thelanguage structure and semantic were also carefully addressed to ensure good visibilityfor search engines.In late 2005, the website was substantially redesigned in order to increase the number ofreferences in the catalogue, dedicate more space for products information and facilitateusability. These changes had a clear impact on the website audience and demand foronline purchase facilities drastically increased. Then, Quatuor offered distance sellingservices with credit-card payment by phone, but it was time to move forward and develope-sales activities.Quatuor called on a local website developer, Globule Bleu 53 , to add e-commercefunctionalities to the website and develop a back-office system for order management.For payments, Quatuor choose Ogone 54 . Along to this, the catalogue functionalities,information and design were significantly upgraded. The new version was launched inOctober 2006. In July 2007, the catalogue included 1,200 products and e-sales weightedabout 25% of the growing company turnover.e-Business management and toolsFrom a usability point of view, Quatuor’s website offers all the basic functionalitiescommon to online shopping websites: the user can search some products, manage itsshopping basket, create and manage its customer account and order online. Moreinterestingly, different web-based management tools are used from order to delivery,while human intervention and follow-up is required at every stage. This non-integratedsolution may appear to be archaic, but proves to be a critical success factor.There are two distinct purchase procedures in Quatuor:Simplified procedure: Decoration products and small pieces of furniture can bepurchased online in a classical one-shot procedure. Selected products are added5354Globule Bleu is a Belgian web agency specialised in web-building, e-marketing and webapplication development (www.globulebleu.com).Ogone is a Belgian company offering a range of services for processing electronic payments.Established in 1996, Ogone initially offered banking and financial IT consultancy services. Afterworking with major banks on core banking applications, Ogone went on to develop electronicbanking platforms for banks. The company now offers more than 25 local payment methods andworks with over 6,000 traders and 80 banking connections in 25 countries (www.ogone.com).121
ICT and e-business impact in the furniture industryto “my basket”, delivery costs are calculated automatically, and products can beordered and paid directly.Normal procedure: For any other furniture, selected products are added to “myselection” and the customer is invited to ask for an estimate, which will be sent tohim in a 48-hour time. When the email alert is received, the estimate is preparedmanually (using the ERP system) by one of the members of Quatuor, whobecomes the personal contact person for the customer until the delivery. Duringthe estimate elaboration, the contact person evaluates delivery costs (whichdepend on many factors) and delays, but also verifies the coherence of the order(in terms of assortment for instance). Usually, the person in charge contacts thecustomer by phone of email to clarify certain aspects of the order and, if necessary,provide some advice. Then, when the final estimate is ready, it is sent by email tothe customer who can pay online (down payment) by clicking on the attachedhyperlink.Hercule 55 is a tailor-made back-office software developed by Globule Bleu and used fore-order management. It is an extranet, which allows reactivity at any time and place toensure that customers needs are taken into account and addressed in due time. When apayment is done (in both simplified and normal procedures), the person in chargereceives an email giving access to the order details in Hercule. The order has to bevalidated manually so as to check its coherence and track stocks in the ERP system. Thevalidation generates an e-mail, which is sent to the customer. This email confirms theundertaking of the order, and specifies the name and contact information of the person incharge (in the normal procedure, it remains the person who prepared the estimate). Thenthe product, if available, is prepared to be delivered .Hercule includes a delivery planning management system, which is managed by thedelivery manager. Access is given to independent delivery men working for Quatuor on aregular base (only in Belgium: for France, the delivery company has its own proceduresand management tools). Hercule generates order sheets and address stickers for theparcels, which are prepared in the warehouse. When a product is ready to be delivered,the person in charge has to arrange the delivery schedule based on the client’s anddelivery men’s availability, as well as other delivery delays.To support its activity, both in the store and on the internet, Quatuor has a tailor-madeand web-based ERP system. It is used for stock management, estimating and invoicing.The website is not fully integrated to the ERP. Three times a day, a script is launchedautomatically to download data from Hercule to the ERP system. In order to uploadinformation from the ERP system (information on stock and product characteristics) onehas to launch a manual script: during this procedure, information on stock and productscharacteristics can be modified to better suit the website requirements.Navicat® is an additional tool used as a CRM system 56 . It helps to extract MySQL datafrom the website, generate statistics and build mailing lists for marketing operations. Fora better follow-up of e-mailings (who clicked on what?), Quatuor works with a serviceprovider.5556Hercule is not a registered brand, but the name given internally to the back-office software usedby Quatuor.Navicat® is a MySQL database administration tool.122
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