Order processing
Elements of order processing
An online order processing system typically consists of a shopping cart (as these software packages are known), a credit card merchant payment system, a connection to the picking and packing process, and perhaps to logistics services. Where a company deals with regular customers, orders may instead be made using by raising an order number, with orders periodically invoiced. (Many of these processes have historically been referred to as Electronic Data Interchange, or EDI, which is also discussed in the ‘Supplier Management’ white paper.) Online systems are available to your customers at any time, which suits them, and they should reduce the time your staff need for taking and processing orders.
Shopping carts and online payment
Online stores and payment systems have been established for many years. There are now many shopping carts aimed at smaller businesses, as well enterprise systems licensed by ASPs, including many offering merchant services (credit card clearing, currency conversion, and so on). If you host your shopping cart on a server on your network, you will need the always-on aspect of broadband. If it is externally hosted, broadband will still be useful if you want to regularly check the progress of orders, download them for invoicing, or review order or payment histories. If the shopping cart needs to connect to an inventory or some other database on your office network, or to a warehouse, you will need broadband to make an always-on connection into your network.
If you clear payments offline through a standard merchant system (sometimes referred to as PDQ terminals), you may be able to use broadband to easily post transaction information to your bank or credit card company at the end of the day.
Tracking orders
Once orders are being taken electronically, it becomes possible for customers to track order progress, possibly including shipment and delivery. Customers can do this at their convenience, even when your office is not open, and you save resources by not having to answer queries over the telephone. If your order tracking system is on your local network you will need broadband to allow customers to access it.
Connecting to other sites
If you have computerised inventory or warehousing systems and work over multiple sites, broadband can let you connect the local area networks (LANs) at each site to create a wide area network (WAN) over which you can query those systems. This will save time over phoning colleagues to check stock levels, and will give your operations greater ‘visibility’.
Tools and services
Shopping carts
Actinic Order Manager
Supports picking lists, invoicing, part orders, and credit card clearing.
Platform: Perl-based, uses Microsoft Access
Ease of use: high for setting up
Cost: around £300
www.actinic.co.uk/products/orderman.htm
Microsoft BizTalk
A workflow-based system that can be customised for order processing and other EDI-type applications.
Platform: Windows
Ease of setup: low
Cost: £1000s to £10,000s
www.microsoft.com/BizTalk
Apple WebObjects
A high-powered tool for shopping carts and a wide variety of interactive, database-driven products.
Platform: MacOS
Ease of use: medium
Cost: $99 to $50,000
www.apple.com/webobjects
Inventory management
Access Accounts
www.access-accounts.com
Online payment
When selecting a payment provider you will confirm that their services are compatible with your commerce platform.
WorldPay
www.worldpay.com
DataCash
www.datacash.co.uk
NetBanx
www.NetBanx.co.uk
BT click&buy
www.btclickandbuy.com
SECPay
www.secpay.com
Planet Payment
www.planetpayment.com
iBill
www.ibill.com
PayPal Web Accept
www.paypal.com
esellerate
www.esellerate.net
NOCHEX
www.nochex.co.uk
Verisign Payment Services
www.verisign.com/products
Tracking orders
Almost every logistics company offers online booking and tracking of shipments. Whether they can integrate more extensively with your systems - with automated booking of collections, or integration of shipment information with your order tracking service - depends on a number of factors, including the systems and data formats their systems support.
What you need
You will need broadband to be able to host or get regular access to order processing and merchant services, whether hosted on your network or provided by an ASP. You may also need it to allow customers to track orders and, if your company operates over multiple sites, to facilitate access to inventory information.
Next steps
Where to go
For specific advice on which applications discussed might fit your business needs, or on finding and evaluating suppliers and products, you can contact your local, government-funded, Business Link service (www.businesslink.org). You might also review the UK Online for Business website (www.ukonlineforbusiness.gov.uk).
Look for software, ASP and integration suppliers at:
uk.dir.yahoo.com/business_and_economy/business_to_business/Electronic_Commerce
Learn on
Business Europe (www.businesseurope.com) has a number of articles worth reviewing (free registration required):
Implement online payment solutions
Accept credit cards over the web
Make financial transactions on the internet secure
Create web-based customer account access
See also the Business Link (www.businesslink.org) article on Fulfilment and delivery in E-Commerce & IT > Business Issues > Practical Matters.
Watch out for...
Landing foreign buyers
Allowing online ordering via the Web increases the likelihood that foreign buyers will want to buy from you. This may be your explicit intention, and if so you will need a shopping cart that can work in the desired currencies and apply any appropriate taxes, and merchant service that can take payment in those currencies. You should also consider how to help buyers calculate the cost of items, and shipping costs, in their chosen currency.
Make it usable
To make a sale online, your customers need not only to be able to find the product they want, but to order it easily and quickly, and receive prompt order confirmation (and updates on order progress where appropriate). Shopping carts and payment systems need to be designed considering usability, and backend systems need to perform well enough that customers do not start to think the order is taking so long to process that the order request has been lost.
Playing at cards
Credit cards used online are more liable to fraud than many other payment mechanisms and the charge-back rate (the number of payments subsequently declined by the payee) is surprisingly high. You should carefully review the potential costs of accepting credit cards online, taking into account the not inconsiderable rates charged by merchant services companies.
Confirmed customers
The sooner you confirm to your customers what they have ordered and when and where it should arrive, the sooner they will be aware if there has been a mistake in their order - resulting from information they entered in error or the order processing system.
Returns and goods not accepted
As with an offline sale, customers may return goods ordered (according to your terms of business and relevant trading laws) or damaged on arrival. With goods ordered online, the rate of return in the first instance is likely to be higher as they may have been purchased sight unseen.
Security blankets
With online transactions, appropriate consideration of security can add credibility to your on-line business. A Web server that allows for secure connections will encrypt transactions between it and the client-side browser. Additionally getting a ‘digital certificate’ for your site will allow users to verify that the site is operated by a legitimate company. Certificate authorising services include BT’s Trustwise (www.trustwise.com) and Verisign’s SSL Certificates (www.verisign.com/products). If order processing takes place on a server in your office, you should ensure that it is isolated from your main network, to prevent it from being used to gain access to other machines.
Where you have had software written for order processing, ensure that someone with appropriate skills and experience checks that the software follows good practice in handling sensitive data. If a third party company is taking payments on your behalf, get reassurance from them regarding security by asking for an explanation in plain language of how their system works.
Your employees should understand and familiarise themselves with the company’s security policies, and you should limit the number of people who can access credit card or other sensitive customer information you hold. Bear in mind that anyone who can technically administer your whole system will have such access.
You should also consider the legal issues around storing data, detailed at the government Data Protection website (www.dataprotection.gov.uk) site for more information.
Copyright Nico Macdonald/BT plc © 2003
