Imaging & Document Solutions - Bright Ideas: Smart Parts Sites; Faster PCs, Faster Laptops

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Smart Parts Sites

E-Commerce by the SKU

To compete in today's e-marketplace, companies that sell high-value products must provide customers with a complete business-to-business e-commerce solution for spare parts. Spare parts include every aspect of product support information, such as access to diagrams, graphics, troubleshooting, a glossary of product parts and strong links to transactions. To be successful, an e-commerce site must be:

1. Intelligent: An intelligent site offers all the content needed for a customer to make a buying decision and provides the highest quality service and support for a long-term relationship. For example, customers shouldn't need to go through an entire online product manual to find the answer to a problem. Instead, make it easy for customers to navigate thousands of pages of text, graphics and parts lists with powerful, intelligent search capabilities, hierarchical tables of contents, user-specific hyperlinking and visual navigation.

2. Dynamic: A dynamic Web site keeps pricing, technical and catalog information up to date so that the original equipment manufacturer can keep distributed spare parts applications current for the customer. Also, customers should be able to add their own technical content to the manufacturer's e-commerce site, eliminating the need for separate applications or publications.

3. Automated: An automated site makes content assembly, distribution and e-commerce functions fast and easy. For example, a shopping list can simplify the ordering process.

Randy Clark is vice president of marketing at Enigma, in Burlington, MA

Faster PCs, Faster Laptops

Do They Help Employees Work Faster?

PCs and operating systems change all the time. Before you rush out to get all your employees new Windows 2000 desktops and laptops, ask yourself whether the new equipment will improve productivity. Keep the following questions in mind.

1. Are people more productive with laptop computers? Yes. Our studies show that a laptop computer will pay for itself within nine months of its purchase if the employee carries it home and uses it there more than two hours a week. However, other recent studies show that for most employees, a home computer produces the same benefit, and you can buy as many as five home computers for the cost of one equivalent laptop. In some cases, the home computer is actually a more productive investment because employees often leave their laptops at work due to their weight. Stat Oil of Europe provides its employees with home computers. Delta Airlines and Intel also provide employees with subsidized computers.

2. What is the most reliable PC platform? If a personal computer goes down, the employee is on an instant paid vacation. It used to be that personal computers were nearly the same regardless of brand or configuration. This has changed with the emergence of "legacy free" computers and Windows 2000. Products like the Compaq iPAQ, IBM NetVista and HP eVectra running Windows 2000 provide uptime in months, according to Giga research, where Windows 98 has an average failure rate of about a day and a half, and Windows NT has an average failure rate of once a week. Performance-wise, the closest notebook is the Sony XG 28 and 29 running Windows 2000; expect other vendors to announce similar designs soon.

3. Should my company host its applications or provide them on the employees' equipment? Most companies are finding that a dramatic reduction in support costs is gained by hosting an application rather than distributing it to every personal computer in the organization. We expect that most companies will have moved to this method of application deployment by the end of 2005.

4. Should my company be concerned about repetitive stress injuries like carpel tunnel syndrome and tendonitis, back pain from poor posture and eye strain? Injuries can dramatically reduce job satisfaction and productivity and expose your organization to litigation. A number of advances in workstation design are coming to the market, but the best thing to do is to have an ergonomics expert look at your employees' work spaces and suggest corrective action. At the very least, it will make you aware of potential problems, and you can make informed decisions on how to correct it.

Rob Enderle is vice president and research leader, desktop and mobile technology, for Giga Information Group (www.gigaweb.com), Cambridge, MA.