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Paper/Forestry Case Study
Company
Headquartered in Covington, Kentucky, xpedx is a customer-driven
distributor of printing paper, packaging supplies and equipment,
facility supplies, and graphic imaging prepress equipment and
supplies. xpedx delivers customer solutions through 120 wholesale
distribution centers and 175 stores, serving retail customers and
small printers. The xpedx market focus is retail,
commercial printing, on-demand printing, heavy manufacturing, the
automotive industry, high-tech manufacturing, publishing, and
national accounts.
Project
xpedx was seeking a means to reach its customers by providing
in-depth and timely industry information along with complete order
management capabilities and comprehensive specifications on the tens
of thousands of products that it sells.
Solution
Fisher Towne & Associates created an inclusive
business-to-business e-commerce system for xpedx, enabling xpedx
customers to make purchases from their desktops with real-time
inventory and order status information and includes many new and
proven features.
xpedx.com features:
• A stock checking mechanism allows customers to query in
real-time the current status of inventory for items they are
interested in ordering. The system will query the appropriate xpedx
business systems for the item(s) and quantities in question and
return a real-time availability status.
• A catalog search allows users to enter search terms and
optionally define various filtering criteria.
• Through an "Order by Quick Add" screen, customers can add
items to their cart by simply entering an SKU number and item
quantity.
• An order review/order history component enables users to view
past orders and, depending on its status, have the ability to modify
it. The status of the order will change based on information
provided by the business system uploads to the Web system, which
occur in real time at the direction of the user, or via daily
uploads. Fisher Towne created a custom integration module
that is specific to xpedx business systems and automates all
uploads.
• A new interactive component automates the request for paper
samples and other promotional materials. More widespread use of
online sample requesting will enable xpedx to quantify real-time
sample requests across the country ? information that will be used
for more exact sales forecasting.
Technologies Used
FTA used the following technologies to complete this project:
• Active Server Pages
• IBM MQ-Series connections
• MS SQL-Server
• MS Visual Source Safe
• Visual Basic and C++ COM |