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November 8, 1999

E-Business For Small Businesses
Cincinnati Bell service adds E-commerce option to online yellow pages directory

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om-and-pop shops in Cincinnati can now turn to their phone company to help transform themselves into E-businesses. Cincinnati Bell is among the first telcos to incorporate an E-commerce option in its online yellow pages directory.

Cincinnati Bell operates an online directory of about 45,000 small businesses in the area. With the new service, scheduled to be unveiled in a few weeks, it will host Web sites with E-commerce features for them. The company is using Orbit Commerce's E-commerce software solution, which gives the Web sites features, such as real-time payment processing and fraud protection. "In order for these companies to remain in existence, they'll have to be somewhere on the Web," says Haluk Nural, general manager of E-commerce solutions for Cincinnati Bell.

The service is designed with small customers in mind. They can log onto Cincinnati Bell's Web site and use templates to set up their Web sites without having to know HTML coding. Those who don't want to set up their site can rely on Cincinnati Bell, which will handle the project for an additional charge. The service, which would typically cost about $50,000 if procured elsewhere, includes payment and fraud protection via Orbit's Clear Commerce product.

Cincinnati Bell handles all of the payment processing. When orders are received, the carrier automatically E-mails them to the merchant's desktop. It will also set up for each customer a merchant's catalog, containing product and pricing information.

Dan Loyd Jr., president of Facet Jewelry & Pawn in Amelia, Ohio, plans to go live with his E-commerce site in a few weeks. "As a pawn shop, we have a poor image that we constantly have to battle," he says. "The new E-commerce site will give us a way to show people the high quality of merchandise we carry and reach a wider audience."

The E-commerce site will be hosted on the CincinnatiExchange.com yellow pages directory site--a potential downside because customers must start off at the Cincinnati Bell portal to reach the merchants, rather than going directly to a catchy URL.

The service will be priced from $48 to $270 per month, depending on how many Web pages a customer needs.

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