Is webshpere right for my company?

[s***@telenet.be]

My company is a B2B manufacturer of packaging solutions.
We have always focused on industrial clients.

We rely on a team of sales representatives to sell our products ,mainly, in large quantities.
Recently our product gamma has been broadened and has become more attractive for smaller companies such as retailers.

Because it would not be very cost effective to train a new team of sales representatives we are researching the possibilities of opening an e-commerce channel. This channel should target another market than our sales team currently does.

Our e-commerce site is required to offer the following keyfeatures:

? Sell standard products with minimum quantities.

? Calculate shipping cost based on postal code. Some of the shipments would be done by our own logistic service, some by an external shipping company. Express delivery always by another company.

? Some products are configurable by the customer. For these products the customer should be able to input all parameters and ask a custom price. Price calculation to be handled by back office.

? We would be selling within the European Union. A lot of the transactions in our business between residents of different EU states are tax exempt. The site has to be able to detect this via TAV (VAT , BTW) identification number and iban code.
Verification of TAV number can be done by back office.

? Payment: gateway for credit cards ? C.OD. - bank transfer - paypal


Is IBM Websphere commerce right for me? Yes? please tell my why...

Which edition should I buy? Are there any other products that I should buy besides Websphere Commerce to complement WC?

Will an IDE be necessary or will Webshpere include all functions required by my company?

Any answers would be very welcome!

Thank you.

Simon

[m***@ca.ibm.com]

Hi Simon, I have sent this to someone who can give you the information you need.
Regards,
Frances

[m***@ca.ibm.com]

Yes WC could be a great fit here

We are strong in B2B and B2C

B2B can also handle individual Ts and Cs on price and delivery for your larger Customers

We have a multilanguage multicurrency solution

We would like to have one of our specialists call on you, how do we best contact you to follow-up with an intial phone discussion?

[s***@telenet.be]

Thx for the replies.

My personal details are:
Simon Smeets

Peperstraat 200
9000 Gent
Belgium
[phone]
simon[remove]***@telenet.be


PS: Try making sense of this:
I asked the excact same question (same text as start of thread) of the Belgian infocenter by email. This was the respons:

*IBM HotMedia is a toolkit that can be used to create special effects such as *streaming audio, 360-degree views, animations, panning and scrolling, and *zoomable multi-resolution images.
*It can also be used to add interactions and hot links to this rich media *content. It is provided with WebSphere Commerce Studio. You can use the rich *media content you create with IBM HotMedia to enhance the presentation, *demonstrate the use of products, and add sizzle to the store Web site.

*SALES: see WEBSPHERE SOFTWARE
*

*Go to www.ibm.com/be
*Click on Products on the top of the page Then select Software from the list.
*Click on the purple Websphere link on the right Under Why Websphere Software, *choose Products by category Select Web Commerce from the list.
*
*More info on HotMedia can also be found online: HotMedia.

*Or you can call Christophe De Melio : 02 655 54 22

*Cordialement, kind regards, met vriendelijke groeten,*

*
*IBM CRM/BTO Contact Centre EMEA
*Tel: [phone]
*E-mail: ***@be.ibm.com
*Website: http://www.ibm.com/be
*Ontvang IBM informatie aangepast aan uw behoeften, bezoek Selectinfo:
*http://www-5.ibm.com/be/profile/nl/subscribe.html

[geo]

Nice start of a dialog.

The answer is yes and no likely.

WebSphere Commerce is a very feature rich environment. The success and
cost of your implementation of those features depends on the partner you
choose to assist or complete the project. Best practice #1, either get IBM
or a partner who knows WC to assist you to implement your site. The size of
the product guarantees that even users with 2 or more years of experience
regularly make rookie mistakes with the product.

WebSphere Commerce is written in Java. If your organization already uses
Java extensively this will be a nice fit. However Worst practice #1 brings
for the following postulate. Never assume that someone who knows Java will
be able to create a WC site. Just because someone knows Java does not mean
that they will code within the WC framework to create a site that functions
correctly under any appreciable load.

WebSphere Commerce data model is supports a wide range of features and
customizations. Best practice #2, use the OOTB data model for long term
cost of ownership benefits. This data model is enormous and directly
impacts the cost of your implementation and complexity of customization.
The understanding of your data and WC data model are inversely proportional
to risk of failure and cost impact on your implementation.

The IDE is the integrated development environment used to customize the
product, typically you or your partner will have copies of this product.
Best practice +3, use the IDE, it allows you to make customizations in a hot
reloadable copy of WebSphere Application Server. The server environment
allows you to deploy production environments, but is very obtuse to
develop directly against do to the need to reload the code base with server
restarts to refresh the cached pages.

Cost. The product costs money, so if you or your implementation partner do
not know enough about the product, a consequence is the increased amount of
custom code and associated risk/cost. Worst practice #2, buy WC and then
completely customize the base product. This decreases the reuse of the core
product. The essential reason to use WebSphere Commerce is to have IBM
maintain the feature set and the migration of the core application from
version to version of both WC and the associated DB/WWW/WAS and associate
application stack.

Regards,
geo

Post by s***@telenet.be
My company is a B2B manufacturer of packaging solutions.
We have always focused on industrial clients.
We rely on a team of sales representatives to sell our products ,mainly,
in large quantities.
Recently our product gamma has been broadened and has become more
attractive for smaller companies such as retailers.
Because it would not be very cost effective to train a new team of sales
representatives we are researching the possibilities of opening an
e-commerce channel. This channel should target another market than our
sales team currently does.
? Sell standard products with minimum quantities.
? Calculate shipping cost based on postal code. Some of the shipments
would be done by our own logistic service, some by an external shipping
company. Express delivery always by another company.
? Some products are configurable by the customer. For these products the
customer should be able to input all parameters and ask a custom price.
Price calculation to be handled by back office.
? We would be selling within the European Union. A lot of the transactions
in our business between residents of different EU states are tax exempt.
The site has to be able to detect this via TAV (VAT , BTW) identification
number and iban code.
Verification of TAV number can be done by back office.
? Payment: gateway for credit cards ? C.OD. - bank transfer - paypal
Is IBM Websphere commerce right for me? Yes? please tell my why...
Which edition should I buy? Are there any other products that I should buy
besides Websphere Commerce to complement WC?
Will an IDE be necessary or will Webshpere include all functions required by my company?
Any answers would be very welcome!
Thank you.
Simon