Best Chairs is using IBM AS/400 with Lotus Domino and IBM WebSphere to create an e-business implementation that transforms customer service, speeds order turnaround, and strengthens ties with their dealers.
Their new corporate Website, Extranet and Intranet replace a Website that provided static content without any content management capabilities. Consumers seeking detailed information about the company's quality home furnishings, or trying to locate a dealer in their area, had to call customer service. Dealers and internal sales reps had no access to company systems. As a result, dealer queries on order status also had to go through customer service. The old order entry process had sales reps working offline. Therefore, they had no way of knowing if they were placing orders for recently discontinued items.
By solving these problems, Best Chairs gains a significant competitive advantage. Their new Web presence has four components:
- A Website for the general public, providing product and dealer information.
- A secure Extranet where dealer/partners can log in and get pricing information, product news, and sales tips, and where they can track their open orders.
- Another secure Extranet where Best Chairs' broker sales reps can get the latest company news and product bulletins, and can enter orders directly from anywhere.
- An Intranet where company employees can get the latest news, work in browser-based ISO applications, and even find out who's having a birthday.
All of the components needed for the Websites are running from a single physical piece of hardware, an IBM AS/400 720. Brent Endsley, solutions architect from Lotus Business Partner Keller Schroeder & Associates, explains, "We've leveraged the AS/400's subsystem architecture by creating different server instances to serve the different audiences and isolate workloads."
Challenge: Pulling Data From Back-End Systems On Demand
Much of the basic content for the Website -- up-to-date product specifications, product availability, dealer contact information, order status, and an order entry application -- were on Best Chairs' IBM AS/400 720. The challenge was to bring that information to the Web, on demand, in areas tailored to the needs of four audiences: the consumers, dealer/partners, sales reps, and employees.
Ron Swick (Best Chairs director of information services) and his team worked with Lotus Business Partner Keller Schroeder & Associates. Their solution leverages their AS/400 with the IBM WebSphere server and the Lotus Domino server -- WebSphere for fast data access and transactions and Domino for content management and document-based applications.
Reducing Calls to Customer Service
Swick and his team had hoped the Website would reduce calls to customer service. Since the site launched, requests for dealer location information alone have dropped from 70 to 80 a month to a trickle.
With dealers just now signing up for Extranet Web access, Swick hopes to have a second very significant drop in calls by the spring of 2001.
Dealers can log onto a secure Extranet and track their open orders. They can quickly see if an order is in production or in transit. They can see which carrier is being used, and when the order will be delivered. With up-to-date order status information, dealers will be able to provide better service to their customers.
Reducing Order Turnaround Time, Reducing Costs
Best Chairs' 40 broker sales reps can now log into a secure Extranet from anywhere, and using IBM's Host-on-Demand, connect directly to the AS/400 to enter their own orders. There has been a dramatic increase in order accuracy as a result. Swick says, "They used to do a batch of orders, once a week. Now, they get on every day, sometimes several times a day, connect and place orders."
With this change, combined with other process reengineering, Best Chairs is eliminating 7 to 10 days from the time it takes for an order to be entered and go into production.
Swick talks about the improvement. "They sign onto the Website, see the latest news bulletin. A click on Inquiry/Sales allows them to log onto the 'green screen' AS/400. Now they are using the same system as our internal order entry department. We have a lot more validation so orders are entered correctly the first time instead of having to go back and forth. New and discontinued items and fabrics show up immediately. Pricing is current and shipping information is always correct."
Sales reps love the new system, which replaces a costly desktop client that Best Chairs used previously.
Easy Maintenance
Easy maintenance of the site is a requirement. Swick didn't want to have to hire a webmaster, "And I didn't want to tie up IT staff because we're pretty small. We wanted to be able to push responsibility out to the departments."
Domino enables "distributed authoring" at Best Chairs. Unstructured content, such as job listings or news articles, is created and managed in Web forms by the content owner, and goes through a publishing approval workflow. The look and feel of the site is controlled through centralized assets such as forms and style sheets, and can be modified quickly by authorized personnel. The forms support full rich text and graphics via a Java applet, so for content owners it's no more complicated than working in a word processor.
With a modular approach to development, by keeping presentation elements separate from application logic, the site is easier to maintain and elements are reusable. Those applications pulling data from the AS/400 are using Java servlets for the application logic, and accessing existing systems data and applications. As a result, the data on the Web site is as current as the production system.
Endsley says, "All presentation elements are hosted by Domino. So you've got one place to go in and edit each of the elements. We're editing in one place and applying throughout the site. At the application level, we're breaking things down into component pieces. For instance, validation logic can be used across server platforms. By making it modular, we can just keep plugging into it."
Best of Both Worlds
Best Chairs demonstrates how a rich Web presence can be achieved by using Domino and WebSphere together. Endsley says, "Best Chairs' implementation is an excellent example of the complementary capabilities of these platforms."
Founded in 1978, Keller Schroeder & Associates, Inc. (KSA) is an IBM Certified for e-business Business Partner. KSA's e-business Solutions Group offers consulting services ranging from business needs analysis to complete development and deployment of e-business solutions.
KSA offers a wide range of products and services including customized application development, package integration, hardware/software sales and support, and technical staffing. Since 1962, Best Chairs, Inc. has provided home furnishings retailers with the products and delivery they need for retail success. The Best Chairs success story began with a very simple theme, which was to make the best quality product at the best possible price. Best Chairs is committed to quality and the total satisfaction of their customers.
