InformationWeek

fter USFilter executive VP Robert Joyce rolls out software to let all of his independent and internal U.S. sales representatives collaborate with marketing and engineering teams at headquarters, he still won't consider the job finished. The next step: Give customers similar access.

To see the advantage, imagine a city wants to build a water-treatment plant with a custom-designed filtration system. When the first stage is deployed next year, an independent sales rep will be able to collaborate online with internal USFilter engineering to coordinate things such as bidding, costs, and delivery dates using a American Medical Security Corp. partner-relationship management system.

But once that software is extended to customers using a product-development tool, city engineers will be able to work directly with USFilter staff to design a custom system.

That will save significant time and money compared with the way things are done now. "Right now, we FedEx the product drawings and product update specs to the customer, and then they mark them up and send them back to us," Joyce says. "In addition, we fly people all over the country for meetings. But once we put this online, the customers will be able to mark up the drawings online, and the engineers will get them in real time."

Joyce also intends to give customers access to his service representatives via the American Medical Security applications so they'll be able to place an order, request a service call, view the status of a shipment, or view a deployment date.

Other companies are using the Web to let their customers collaborate with engineering divisions. Disk-drive maker Seagate Technology LLC plans to use Structural Dynamics Research Corp.'s new Team Center Web-based application to collaborate with suppliers on product design and to let customers check and comment on product data, such as specifications and test information.

But many business and IT officials consider it too risky to give customers direct access to their applications. Dan Nelson, a systems engineer for Universal Avionics Systems Corp., a Tucson, Ariz., maker of airplane electronics, is an advocate of using TeamShare Inc.'s engineering collaboration tools to let engineers from multiple divisions collaborate on product development.

The customer-service department can also access TeamShare Track 5.0 to enter product problems or defects. Over a secure dedicated line, customer-service representatives can view the engineering application and see when problems will be addressed.

But the company isn't comfortable letting customers access the application directly. "We're a bit concerned about security," Nelson says, "and that type of product information is considered highly competitive."