You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2011.
At the beginning of every new year I review the past year’s triumphs and hurdles to not only correctly acknowledge what was accomplished but to layout the IT strategic plan for the new year.
One of the key reasons IT is so mis-understood or not recognized by upper management is that no one really knows what happens in IT and the efforts required to pull off various projects. It’s rather like simply taking for granted that the lights continue to shine or the power to the building is always there. You don’t really notice until they stop working and then all hell breaks loose.
In our modern world the non-IT person completely under estimates the effort needed to implement IT solutions. They have the concept of so-and-so and thus it should just happen, right? This is where expert communication is needed to fully enlighten and keep informed the stake holders and users for any IT project.
Unfortunately many IT executives communicate poorly to upper management and to the user base, if at all. This keeps the IT dept in a sort of “mystery” and generally under appreciated. So, my motto is keep interested parties informed on what is going on. Very simple but very powerful.
So, what was accomplished by my IT Dept in 2010?
- Rebuilt the IT Dept through personnel changes, clear job descriptions, regular weekly meetings, setting of strategic plans, establishing steering committees and generally putting in effective management.
- Created an effective IT Help Desk by hiring two staff, rolling out the first ever ticketing system at the company and grooving in the team to service the 180+ end-users. The result has been over 1,100 resolved tickets and a positive shift to satisfied customers.
- Resurrected the dead corp intranet on a new platform (Mindtouch Enterprise Wiki) with all new content. The result has been the re-establishment of vital shared information in the company and the first ever comprehensive knowledge base for the IT Dept.
- Rolled out the first enterprise anti-virus solution (using Symantec Endpoint Protection) to provide improved security and safety for individual PCs, laptops and servers.
- Rolled out an ERP integrated warehouse shipping solution (Logicor Globalship) that improved warehouse shipment efficiency by 1,000%.
- Rolled out an ERP integrated sales tax solution (ADP Taxware) that streamlined sales tax calculations on all orders and obviated the need to have sales tax returns prepared and filed in 100s of jurisdictions.
- Placed all Xerox copiers under a fleet contract and saved the company $788/month.
- Rolled out the first Microsoft Active Directory network at the company to 65% of the users across 4 offices with 3 offices left to go.
- Successful desktop/laptop upgrades for 65% of the users resulting in faster more reliable systems.
- WAN/LAN upgrades that have increased Internet access performance by 700%.
- Successful upgrades to the ERP system including 4x memory, latest ERP version, new 64-bit Linux base OS and various custom modifications.
- Successful launch of the first ever e-commerce website for the company – Tools4Heroes.com (see my poston the launch). Project triumphs:
- Debugged and established the ERP API integration with the website for product synchronization and web sales order insertions.
- Prepared a 2,000+ product database including images, descriptions, weights and pricing.
- Integrated the website with the new Logicor Globalship shipping system for real-time shipping cost estimates.
- Integrated the website with the new ADP Taxware system for correct sales tax calculations on all orders.
- Complete shopping cart setup including an Internet merchant bank account, payment gateway and working with Accounting to ensure all monies flowing properly.
- Established the internal order fulfillment processes and procedures to provide excellent customer service.
- Successful emergency move of the Firebooks.com website to another ISP when the old one went out of business unexpectedly.
- Over 2,300 custom ERP reports delivered to end-users.
- Successful roll-out of the first ever email marketing system for Marketing using Vertical Response.
- Successful implementation of a new ERP product pricing process which cut update time by 50-70%
Whew! It was a busy year and most of the above was done after I joined in March or in the last 9 months of the year. This was all done with a relatively small group of staff – 2 Help Desk, 1-2 System Admins, 4.5 Product DB staff, .75 ERP Reports staff and 2 out-sourced web developers.
It was a very good year!
Tools4Heroes.com Homepage
Upon taking up my new post as Director of Technology with L.N. Curtis & sons in March of 2010, one of my mandates was to debug a 2.5 year e-commerce project that had stalled. This was a vital project as the company did not yet have an e-commerce site and was therefore missing out on a significant revenue stream.
The new site development had been outsourced to a custom .NET development shop in San Jose but only the site design and basic back-end for managing products had been implemented.
The remaining challenges were many and varied:
- Product synchronization with the Infor SX Enterprise ERP system had yet to be developed and gotten working.
- Product pricing for web sales had yet to be finalized along with specialized ERP pricing records.
- Sales order insertion into the ERP for order fulfillment had yet to be developed.
- Missing Internet merchant bank account.
- Missing Internet payment gateway.
- Shopping cart had yet to be implemented.
- Most static content on the site was missing or not final (e.g. Privacy Policy).
- No method for determining correct Sales Tax.
- No method for determining correct shipping costs.
- No method for automatic email confirmations on ordering and shipping.
As you can see there were many key site elements which were missing and had to be dealt with quickly; and these were handled with the site going live in 8 months just before Thanksgiving 2010.
In the following sections I detail the hurdles to get the site built and launched:
- Infor SX Enterprise ERP Integration
- Product Synchronization
- Shipping Charge Calculation
- Sales Tax Calculation
- Sales Order Insertion
- Shopping Cart
- Internal Order Fulfillment
- Post Launch Report
- Next Steps
- Post Mortem
Infor SX Enterprise ERP Integration
Firstly the Infor SX Enterprise API is not web service based and requires one to load either a .NET or Java API on your web server which you then call. Couple this with no documentation and expensive Infor professional services, I now had a recipe for frustration. Given problems with the .NET API it was dropped in favor of the Java version which required a re-write of the interface code. Later, the interface had to be written into a web service form itself in order to handle unusually long socket open times of the underlying Java API – an astonishing 4-5 seconds.
The web server had been located in a 3rd party data center whereas the ERP server was in-house and this required a hardware dedicated VPN tunnel to provide a secure channel.
Product Synchronization
The ERP system maintains all web product pricing and availability information which needed to be synced with the website DB. The antiquated Infor API does not provide a simple query mechanism to simply get all web coded products. Instead we were forced to get every product (over 50,000) and then narrow down the result set to the 2,000 web products and then query again to actually get pricing and other details. The process takes many hours and is done overnight. This is certainly not an elegant solution but it works until Infor can provide a more interactive and/or robust API.
All 2,000 products had to be configured in the ERP system with the correct web product code, pricing and weight. Interestingly, many of the products had no weights and thus there were many trips to the warehouse to check actual weights!
Shipping Charge Calculation
The ERP system did not have the ability to determine estimated shipping costs and these would be needed in the shopping cart. Given that our items ranged from very light items (like batteries) to very heavy items (50 lb containers), free shipping was not an option, especially since we would be shipping anywhere in the United States.
A shipping system module for the ERP system was located, evaluated and brought online: Logicor GlobalShip. This system has a seamless interface with the ERP and is accessed by the website via an API for determining shipping rates based on destination zip code, weight of item(s) and class of service.
The GlobalShip product was also rolled out in one warehouse to replace the existing UPS Worldship PC. This new system provides:
- Warehouse shipping station: PC with GlobalShip software, scale, shipping label printer and bar code scanner.
- Bar scanning of warehouse pick tickets to bring up item for shipment directly from the ERP.
- Weighing package on scale and adjusting shipment details.
- Printing shipment label and updating ERP system with shipment information, including tracking code.
Sales Tax Calculation
The company has a complex sales tax situation in that it has 11 different tax nexus points in the western United States. This includes Washington and Colorado which have destination sales tax laws (every zip code and even partial zip codes have their own sales tax rate). Thus a simple tax calculation was out of the question.
The ERP system was being updated manually to provide the correct sales tax rates for regular orders but the API would have needed custom modifications to calculate the right sales tax.
Therefore, the decision was made to adopt the ADP Taxware product which worked seamlessly with the Infor ERP in order to provide sales tax rates based on the destination zip code. This was a major project to evaluate, install and turn-up. This product was a great enhancement as it removed the necessity for manual updating of our ERP sales tax tables plus ADP even prepares the sales tax returns and will file on your behalf. Great product.
Sales Order Insertion
When a user is ready to check-out, a Sales Quote request is sent to the ERP in order to get the correct sales tax and estimated shipping. Then after the user’s credit card is charged, an actual Sales Order is sent to the ERP and this kicks off the internal order fulfillment process.
Interestingly, a sales quote cannot be converted to a sales order via the API and thus we had to create a job to delete old sales quotes.
Shopping Cart
The first order of business was to get an Internet merchant bank account which is normally a routine process but not if the company is considering changing banks. This added a delay of some months and then the bank had quite a lengthy approval process – they wanted to see an actual working shopping cart with a secure cert (quite unusual since a secure cert is only needed on a live site) before giving us an account. Anyway, we finally got an account!
Signing up with Authorize.net as our payment gateway was a snap and was easily integrated with the website.
Internal Order Fulfillment
The company had never had an e-commerce operation and thus I established the order fulfillment and customer service processes in the company which included:
- Setting up a new toll-free number.
- Training the warehouse staff on how to use the new GlobalShip shipping system for shipping web orders.
- Training the inside sales staff on the website and how to provide customer service.
- Setting up the ERP system for alerting the right management on new orders.
Post Launch Report
The site launched with no significant issues and started taking online orders almost immediately. Internal order fulfillment was also smooth. Metrics since going live:
- 9,575 visits
- 92,000 page views
- 9.65 pages/visit
Overall, a technically beautiful launch.
Next Steps
The emphasis is now on marketing the site heavily and we have selected DEP Labs as our Internet marketing partner. We have also adopted Salesforce.com as our new sales and marketing platform and will be used initially for email marketing campaigns.
Post Mortem
Now that the dust has settled, how would I have done this project differently? I would have taken a closer look at the ERP API sooner in order to determine if it would really fit the bill or not. Given the difficulties we had with the Infor API, I would have preferred making the website more intelligent about product information and only use the ERP for availability information.
I am a big fan of SaaS and would also have prefered to have built the site on a SaaS e-commerce platform and thus leveraged all that the e-commerce platform could provide (e.g. user contributed content, reviews, accounts, etc.).
If I could have swapped out the ERP system altogether then that would have made my day but even Hercules has his limits.
