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By MARK GIBBS On an otherwise uneventful Monday morning, you're pouring through your e-mail when you find a blockbuster that nearly makes you spray coffee all over your keyboard. Your company is opening a regional office in Chicago, and you've been tasked with setting it up on the IT front. You want to make it as simple and straightforward as possible and, given that you're a 21st century kind of guy (or gal), that means using the Internet as much as possible. Here are some of the e-commerce sites worth a look. First, you'll need computers. Your natural inclination is to head to the e-commerce sites run by the usual suspects - Compaq, Dell and IBM-so you check out www.compaq.com, www.dell.com/store/index.htm and www.ibm.com. The Dell site is particularly worth a visit - not only to check out its hardware but also to see a first-rate example of an e-commerce site. The Dell site pulls in $10 million per day, seven days a week. Much of this comes from consumer sales, as the sales group handles the really large corporate accounts. But for IT professionals there's huge value in the detailed technical data and options information that Dell presents on the site. Check out the configuration tool. It lets you select exactly which components your server and desktops will have and you'll then get a quote. The process is much faster than talking to salespeople and waiting for faxes. While checking out the computer mainstays is critical, you'd be remiss if you didn't do some additional comparative shopping to see if other vendors have better prices or deals. As such, you'll find www.pricetrac.com, run by CSG Interactive, invaluable. PriceTrac.com is a search engine that tracks computer prices. PriceTrac.com is not affiliated with any participating dealers; therefore, it uses no preferences or bias when listing prices and products. This makes it a very nice service to have. PriceTrac.com indexes the offerings of all the major online retailers and provides prices and detailed descriptions for more than 200,000 products, upgrades and accessories. IT buyers can search the database for an individual brand or product and sort the results by price order or brand name, and can add specific products to a "Handy List." PriceTrac.com also offers a price notification service. You designate a price that you're willing to pay for an item. When PriceTrac adds a product to the site that meets this price requirement, it sends out an e-mail notification. One company that provides its pricing to PriceTrac is NECX, one of the largest online computer product retailers. NECX, at www.necx.com , is getting pretty sophisticated about e-commerce, particularly in regards to corporate purchasing. It offers the Enterprise Purchasing Network (EPN), a Web-based ordering system for corporate buyers. EPN supports groups of buyers with individual credit and buying limits and generates order reports so an IT manager can oversee purchasing from the head office. EPN is a great example of electronic business. By providing help directly to the end user, it offloads a problem from the IT manager while capturing loyalty. Once users work with the NECX system, they're less likely to bother learning another supplier's interface. It's the Web version of "lock-in," and a powerful marketing strategy for any e-commerce provider. Another powerful strategy is delivering product updates via the Internet. Although this is commonplace for software applications these days, Network Associates was one of the companies at the forefront of this trend. Its antivirus software, which you'll likely use at the new regional office, can be configured to update its database from the company's www.nai.com site. If you're in the market for LAN or ATM switches, routers or a number of other infrastructure components, you'll undoubtedly end up at www.cisco.com. Cisco Systems' e-commerce site is one of the most advanced in the business. Most of Cisco's product orders come from the company's sophisticated site. Surprisingly, not many other networking vendors are yet taking advantage of Web sales. Cabletron, www.cabletron.com, is one exception. It offers all of the informational content you'd expect in terms of specifications and technical details, and provides a configuration system so that you can determine which options go with which products and then generate quotes. Telephone services and Internet access service providers also have been slow to catch the e-commerce wave. Most have Web sites, but ordering still requires a phone call. On the other hand, when you have established service, most carriers provide the ability to monitor and configure a WAN from their Web sites. For example, AT&T's Interactive Advantage service provides secure access to network management tools through a Web interface, and Pacific Bell's FasTrak with Customer Network Reconfiguration site provides disaster recovery tools. With the latter, you set up predefined models that indicate how your network should be reconfigured if a problem occurs and invoke alternative configuration as required. E-commerce services that make life easier for IT managers are still surprisingly hard to find. But these are some good examples of companies that get it. Of course, none of them will be able to help you with that coffee-spitting reflex. |
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  Gibbs is a consultant and writer based in Ventura, Calif. He can be reached at (800) 622-1108, Ext. 7504, or mgibbs@ gibbs.com. Advertising sectionE-Commerce Vendor Showcase
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