The MIS system can send data to your web site, receive data from your web site, and can allow for direct access to your data from your website.

The MIS Software and Standard Web Shopping Carts

This MIS software allows your web site to send data (files) to the MIS software for order creation. The Order Entry module allows you to load orders from separate files and sources including but not limited to EDI transactions, handheld and self contained Bar Code generated orders, web orders, etc.

There is some confusion in the market place associated with “Off-The-Shelf” web shopping carts and we would like to clear up some of the misinformation that exists.

Business to Consumer Web “Shopping Carts” vs. Business to Business needs

Standard Web Shopping Carts are not designed to be customer service systems, order entry systems, or inventory control systems. Most off-the-shelf web shopping carts have extremely limited price flexibility (i.e. predetermined price books by customer or customer type or simple cost plus and/or list minus calculations), many do not provide for real time updates of quantity available for sale functions, most do not provide for any type of backorder controls, most do not provide for accurate sales tax handling based on ship to locations, most do not provide for real-time credit controls (based on past due or credit limit issues). Most companies that use inexpensive shopping carts sell a limited number of items to one type of customer. Variable pricing, customer history, customer credit issues, quantity available for sale, etc. are not needed and not important for this type of transaction.

Simply put, Business to Business web based shopping needs will not be met by a simple and inexpensive “out-of-the-box” web shopping cart program.

Depending on your environment, many distributors require immediate and automated inventory on-hand updating (sales, credits, post physicals, receipts, etc.), product cost changes at time of product receipt, price changes based on constantly updated cost changes, pricing control changes (column pricing, matrix pricing, quantity break pricing, quantity break matrix pricing, contract pricing, customer eligibility controlled promotional pricing, etc.) and this can get complex when you are dealing with thousands of items and thousands of customers. These requirements are not available in what one would consider a standard web shipping cart and custom modifications are generally required. Some web design firms will tell a prospect that their shopping cart will handle Business to Business and Business to Consumer transactions but after careful investigation you will see that nothing is truly real-time and a considerable amount of manual maintenance (manual price changes, manual cost changes, manual quantity changes, constant uploads, etc.) is required to keep your accounting/ERP system in synch with your web store.

We at Accu-Tech have the products, knowledge, and experience with integrating your MIS software
package with your web site but a full and comprehensive needs analysis is required in order to ensure
that your needs are met and investment is returned in a short period of time. If you have any questions
or would like to discuss the possibilities in more detail, please feel free to call us at 800-334-1987.