Adding an online catalog

payment terms on the in-store system, all of these changes will be instantly available to the Web site.

Cox Hardware & Lumber, Houston. Tx.. debuted its Web site in 1998, to little acclaim. "We had a Web site for nine months," recalls Virgil Cox. "We'd tell people to check it out. And they'd say, 'Hey that's great,' but there was nothing to bring them back."

prices customized to their particular discount, link to detailed product information including product images, enter a list of materials for a new quote, review orders in process, and update old quotes. They also can check their account balance, history and activity. (A consumer-oriented version. e-Store. that allows credit card orders will be available in the summer.)

The system reportedly costs a fraction of the price an Internet company would charge to create, maintain and update a site. By using information already stored in the company's instore database, set-up is said to be a breeze. "It's almost no work to put (an e-catalog) up on your Web site," says Rob Vomund, CCI Triad e-commerce marketing manager. "The only things you might have to change are any internal abbreviations that your customers wouldn' t understand."

All "business rules" that have been carefully set up in the POS system (terms, discounts, pricing, credit limits, etc.) carry over to the Web site. Since there's only one set of data, maintenance is minimal. As you change prices, discount schedules and

Then-under-development iNet was something to bring customers back. "We've gotten 7,300 individual visits since we launched in October," Cox says. "It's been successful for the goals we had set (dynamic presence, easy maintainence). Some customers like it a lot; others don't want it. Some are visiting every day, some once a week or once a month. Others have never visited. It's a tremendous value when you consider the cost of doing the same thing on your own."

Best of all, the site is facilitating sales. Still, Cox realizes, "It's just a tool. no better or worse than a forklift. You can still get the job done without it, but it makes it a lot easier."

Great Western Building Materials, Phoenix. Az.. has had iNet online since October, and currently has 24 customers using it. Jim Moore says, "The main reason we did this is to provide an additional service offering to our existing customers, and to give us something more to sell, besides product, price and delivery, when calling on prospective new customers."

Ply Marts, Inc., Norcross, Ga., calls its iNet product research/ procurement tool "Contractor Access."

According to Chris Mahaffey, "We currently have over 50 customers using this system and are adding new customers at the rate of about one a day. The system has been available for approximately five months now but only recently have we actively pushed this tool to our customer base. The response from customers has been good; although most are not ordering directly from the system currently, having 24/7 access to their pricing has proven very helpful to them especially when costing out a job."

In spite of predictions about the paperless office, print remains a viable communication tool. "The paper catalog won't disappear," says Cox. "Many of our customers prefer them. You can throw it in the back of your truck. You can take it with you in the bathroom-and I don't care where people are when they buy from me."

One option is launching an e-catalog hand-in-hand with a printed catalog. "Today, traditional printed documents, the Internet and CD-ROMs are all just alternative ways to publish the same information," says Lynda Brooks, Thomas Technology Solutions. "With proper planning, you can publish in all of these media simultaneously and synergistically, without wasted efforts."