Written by:
4/20/2010 10:58 AM 

FusionWare has been assisting our customers with setting up web stores that fully integrate with their POS systems since 1995.  Over those years we have repeatedly seen these customers realize increased business, often from unforseen sources, that have greatly increased their profitability.  So it is always disappointing to us when we hear of others who have failed to realize these benefits.  We have always understood the business constraints and realities of this type of initiative and strive to come up with an approach that rapidly gets the customer's products and services out to the customer's clients so that the customer can begin to realize a good return on their investment.

We have found, over the years, that there are a number of factors that are common to those customers who have succeeded, and would like to share those with you.  There are also issues that you will need to think about, and knowing these in advance will help you with the process of creating an online storefront to sell your products.

Open Source Platform

In recent years, there have been a number of great open source web store platforms.  These are full featured and very powerful, with large numbers of both users and developers.  They also have large numbers of plug-ins available to enable a lot of very tricky processing.

The real problem is that they aren't designed to easily work with green-screen POS systems, and are typically self-contained environments.

osCommerce

One of these platforms is the osCommerce platform.  FusionWare has modified the source code for this and has a custom plugin that enables us to easily integrate through a web services layer to validate inventory levels, integrate customers on the POS system, and pass order processing to the POS system.  Your POS system will deal with the credit card and accounting information and pass the results back.  The required interfaces are very clearly defined and only come to a small handful.

LAMP, WAMP or WIMP?

osCommerce can be run in one of 3 common configurations:

LAMP

Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.  All open source, and all free.

WAMP

Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP.  You probably already have the Windows system, and may be more comfortable with not having to find and hire a Linux administrator.  The rest is open source and free.

WIMP

Windows, IIS, MySQL and PHP.  For those who already have a web site, and it happens to be an IIS site, this is the configuration for you.

Evolution not Revolution

The first thing to do is to divide and conquer.  Seek to find a subset of things that you can sell that you believe will sell well on the internet and that you can easily process the orders for.  Doing this right can allow you to standardize on shipping costs, avoiding the complexity of having to figure out how much to charge based on size and weight.  This allows you to get some products selling, and then incrementally to add the functionality that will enable you to grow.

This approach also allows you to do a few course corrections.  When selling on the web, as with any kind of sales, it is a process of discovery.  Your assumptions will be challenged, and you will learn as you go, so start with a walk. You can run later!  It also allows you to work out the kinks in your fulfillment processes before putting too many things online.

Staging Environment & Version Control

Most customers who have IT staff will already have test accounts and test servers for playing with.  If you don't have these, you need to invest in having an environment for creating and testing new updates to your web site.  You also need to have a mechanism to track versions so that if you push something to production and it breaks, you can roll back and go back to the drawing board without having to take out your production site.

Fixed Inventory or In-store Stock

One of the things you need to think about is the whole flow of sales.  Here are three possible ways to interact with inventory when you have a retail situation.  You may have other variations but these give you some idea of the options you may wish to consider:

1. Fixed, Unique Inventory

This is where you have a pool of stock that you put in a special part of the warehouse.  You may put 100 widgets aside, then update your web store with the fact that it has 100 of these.  You could have this information provided and updated by a bar code system, so that you constantly know how much inventory you have and how much has been committed. This would then be updated to the web store.  In this situation, the inventory levels could be updated in an overnight batch.  Purchases can immediately process the customer's credit card, since the inventory is guaranteed to be there.

2. Fixed Shared Inventory

This is where you have inventory in a warehouse, but it is shared with phone orders, or possibly can be requisitioned by people in the store and then brought out to a loading dock or into the store.  In this case, the web store must update the inventory, but can safely assume that if the POS system it is integrated with shows there is stock, it is really there and can be committed.  In this scenario again, the credit card can be immediately processed.

3. In-store Inventory

This one is a bit trickier.  The web customer purchases a Widget.  The POS shows that it still has one available, but unbeknownst to the POS system or the web, an in-store customer has grabbed it off the shelf and is wandering around the store with it.  They haven't taken it to the register, so the systems don't *know* that the inventory is *gone*, but it really is no longer available.  Just try to pry it out of the customer's hands!  In this scenario, you cannot immediately process the credit card, although you can put a hold on the funds.  You may have to notify the customer that the product is back ordered, and will need to make these steps part of your fulfillment process.

Access to POS Logic

With FusionWare's web services capability, we are able to access the back-end business logic of many systems, including MultiValue and AS/400 RPG programs.  For many businesses, this is critical as their POS system manages credit card transactions, inventory levels, shipping and other critical aspects of the sales process.

With the FusionWare osCommerce POS Integration plug-in, you have the option to rapidly create and provision a web store to sell your company's products, that integrates your POS and warehouse systems.

FusionWare Direct Product Family

The FusionWare Direct product family includes client providers that enable access to your MultiValue data from Java, .NET and Legacy COM/COM+ environments.

Client Platforms Supported

Client Platforms supported for .NET and COM clients include:

• Windows 2000, 2003 and 2008, 32 bit and 64 bit
• Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, 32 bit and 64 bit

Client Platforms Supported for Java client include:

• Windows 2000, 2003 and 2008, 32 bit and 64 bit
• Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, 32 bit and 64 bit
• IBM Platforms:
  • IBM i (AS/400)
  • System z (mainframe)
  • System p (AIX)
  • Certified "Ready for IBM Systems with Linux"
• Linux
• Unix
• and more...

MultiValue Platforms Supported

• Rocket (formerly IBM)
  • U2 (Universe and Unidata) including Universe back to version 5
  • PI Open
• Raining Data
  • D3
  • mvEnterprise
  • mvBase
• Northgate
  • Reality
  • Reality/X
• Temenos Group
  • jBase
• Ladybridge Systems (coming soon)
  • QM
  • Open QM
• Others (older or unsupported MultiValue Systems
  • UltPlus
  • Power95
  • and more...

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