JSE-listed Mustek, the largest South African PC manufacturer and distributor, has launched a business-to-business e-commerce initiative to open a more accessible communication channel into the company.
Donella Adams, Mustek`s e-business manager says, "the company`s e-commerce project is designed to integrate into our existing order entry system allowing our dealers access to product information, stock availability, pricing, order status, barcode information, account statements - as well enabling them to order and quote on-line."
Phase one of the two-phase project will see the dealers being able to use Mustek`s e-commerce Web site to order stock 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. To ease any tensions dealers may have with respect to ordering online, a salesperson will e-mail the client to confirm the order as soon as it has been placed. Phase two will do away with the human interaction and the order process will be fully automated.
Adams adds that the security and confidentiality of the online transactions is paramount to Mustek and the Web site has been designed to ensure that only authorised dealers can access the e-commerce site. "Distributors have tried to convince their dealers to order online in the past without much success," says Adams. "By making our e-commerce initiative available to our dealers and retaining the human contact to confirm the orders, our dealers have expressed their confidence and excitement in the concept."
To ensure the security of the site, Mustek`s IT manager, Dimitri Tserpes says: "Security for the e-commerce implementation consists of a firewall protecting the server, digital certificates from Verisign providing authentication and 128-bit encryption for the data stream. No data will be written to the external server. The tight integration into the current Mustek backoffice system requires very strict security policies to prevent account information from being compromised."
Phase one of the online ordering Web site was up-and-running as of February 2000, with the second phase implemented over the course of the year.
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