October 2, 2000

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Software Bridges Disconnect Gap On Orders, Deliveries

Commercialware's Collaborate.dot.commerce lets merchants and suppliers share information

By Cheryl Rosen

More on fulfillment:

World Beyond The Assembly Line (9/11/00) On The Move And In Touch (9/11/00) Electronic Buyer's News: FedEx readying product suite to provide package tracking (9/11/00)

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nyone who has ever tried to cancel an online order likely knows about the disconnect between information on a Web site and at a company's call center. To bridge the gap, CommercialWare Inc. last week debuted Collaborate.dot.commerce, software that lets merchants, call centers, and suppliers share information on customer orders, cancellations, and deliveries.

"Today, if an order is already packed in the warehouse and an on-line customer calls to cancel, it's virtually impossible to stop the delivery," says Paige Laflamme, MIS director at Garnet Hill Inc., a natural-products catalog company that sells sheets, clothing, and furniture. "Staying alive means being a company that customers want to deal with by providing the service levels they expect," Laflamme says.

After seeing 12% of its 500,000 annual orders migrate to the Web, the company is considering the software not only to track goods internally, but to share information with a network of shipping suppliers.

The software, which starts at $100,000, links online merchants and suppliers in a browser-based, Java application. "We think the future distribution model will be a hybrid in which retailers stock 80% of the goods they sell and deliver the rest directly through suppliers," says Rohit Agarwal, VP of CommercialWare, which supplies online order-management software for retailers such as Brooks Brothers, Starbucks, and the U.S. Olympic Committee. Jupiter Communications predicts 30% of online retailers will adopt such hybrid fulfillment within 12 to 18 months.

E-retailers will have a bevy of choices when it comes to buying software. Vendors such as Optum, Sameday.com, and Yatrum have a head start with more mature technology, says Jupiter research director David Schatsky. "The market is incipient, and selling to CommercialWare's installed base of clients will be straightforward," he says, "but getting into new accounts won't be a cakewalk."

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