March 15, 2004

National Post
Written By Grace Casselman

When Dell Computer Corp. started selling computers online in 1996, that ecommerce effort consisted of an online form that customers printed, filled in and faxed back to the company!

Four years later, a highly evolved Web commerce presence now brings in about US$40 million worldwide every day, says Don Kerr, director of Dell Canada's advanced systems group in Toronto. "A lot of effort has gone into making that happen," he says, noting about 15 per cent of sales go to general consumers, while 85 per cent is attributed to business and public entities.

To achieve an efficient Web effort has required tightly integrating the Web site with backend corporate systems, says Mr. Kerr. "The site is the biggest contributor to our organization's cost advantage that we take to market. We focus on finding ever way to make it more efficient."

To appeal to businesses, Dell.com and its national affiliates, including Dell.ca, offer customized pages to corporate customers, called Premier Pages, meant to meet customer preferences. For instance, if some companies want to standardize on a certain number of models for ease of system administration, that's reflected on their own Premier Page. "From an e-commerce perspective it's very effective," says Mr. Kerr. The information about previous purchases can also help companies' asset management efforts. "We know everything customers have bought and we make that available to those customers." Moreover, Dell will proactively send out notices to inform customers if their particular machines need to download a particular software fix.

Integrated corporate systems tie in historical sales information with current support efforts. "On the service front, we know everything we've sold you. When you phone, we maintain a complete service inventory and history online," says Mr. Kerr. And on Dell's server and storage products, "resolution agent" technology will electronically contact Dell's technical support department to notify them of potential or pending failures. (That technology will eventually be on all Dell products, says Mr. Kerr.) Depending on the agreement with the customer, Dell staff can sometimes repair the problem remotely, if it's a software issue; or will deal with the customer's technical staff to resolve the problem, says Mr. Kerr.

Meanwhile, Dell has also been working to technically integrate its ecommerce presence with large industry-buying sites or portals, such as Commerce One or Ariba, notes Mr. Kerr. He says the Extensible Markup Language (XML) contributes to the communication between these various sites. "While not the universal panacea, XML plays a big part in our plans. Not every customer will go that way but it should become the de facto standard."

SoftQuad Software Inc. is a serious proponent of XML. In fact, the Toronto-based company was a co-author of the standard, and sells the XMetaL tool for publishing XML documents.

Roberto Drassinower, SoftQuad president and CEO, says XML is basically the successor to the popular formatting standard HyperText Markup Language (HTML). "The Web came into being as a display vehicle," says Mr. Drassinower, indicating that was the strength of HTML. However, XML is more about the exchange of information. For instance, he explains that HTML marks text with "tags" or labels, have to do with how text looks, like fonts or bold. However, XML will mark text with tags for price or part numbers, Mr. Drassinower explains. "It's a platform for business — it dramatically changes how we do business."

For instance, in affiliate programs or other business-to-business ventures, sites can communicate directly with each other with minimal human intervention to interpret data. "We're using the Web as a business tool…not just to display pretty pictures. We need information in a highly searchable, standard way. We need to supply information in a standardized fashion," says Mr. Drassinower.

Efficiencies inherent to the Web are opening up new avenues of business for some corporations. For instance, Vancouver-based Jones Soda Co. has expanded its www.jonessoda.com Web effort to include www.myJones.com. At that site, launched in January, visitors can register with the site and then email over a photo and message to be incorporated on personalized labels for soda, at $29.95 per case.

Users can crop and preview that label online using a Java applet in the browser. Behind the scenes, Lotus Domino server technology will check the validity of the supplied mailing address and check shipping fees, explains Vaclav Vincalek, president of Pacific Coast Information Systems Ltd. in Vancouver, who worked on the site. Depending on that customer location, taxes may vary. Then when the billing information is entered, the credit card number is immediately sent to a third-party transaction services company that approves the transaction. The job is routed to an Apple Macintosh computer, and the customized labels are printed out.

Depending on the shipping option chosen, customers receive their orders in 48 hours to one week, says Peter VanStolk, president and CEO of Jones Soda. "Somebody in Germany can look at this product made in Canada and upload a photo and the product will be sent to them," he says. "The response has been phenomenal." Reprinted with permission.