InformationWeek

We suggest vendors use the following guidelines in preparing proposals. We realize that space is limited and that answering all of the questions outlined here in any detail is extremely difficult if not impossible. However, providing as much high-level information as possible will help us greatly in our selection process. Thank you!

Vendor Information:
Business Focus and Market Focus
What is your business focus? Are you a software provider, integrator, or service bureau? (If you use any integrators as part of your solution, please answer the remaining questions in this section for your partners as well as for your own company.)

Please list the vertical markets or specific applications you specialize in.

List the number of installations or customers for business-to-business E-commerce.

Please list three account references.

Qualifications and Experience
Provide brief company overview, including financial data for the last three years.

How many people are employed?

What is the number of sales and/or service locations?

Pricing Model
If you are a software vendor, what is your software pricing/licensing model (e.g., per server, per seat, per user, maintenance fees, upgrades, transaction fees)?

If you are a service provider or outsourcer, what is your service pricing model (e.g., hourly, based on volumes processed, based on transactions)?

Solution Features
Delivery
How long will it take to complete the Toromont E-commerce solution?

Setup
Provide a brief overview of the architecture required for the Toromont application.

Membership
How does your solution support the ability for customers to enroll in the B2B E-commerce system?

How do customers verify and modify their enrollment data and preferences?

How do you automatically notify users (customers) of successful enrollment or changes to enrollment preferences?

Describe your enrollment system architecture. For example, do you use a proprietary directory? Can you leverage Lightweight Directory Access Protocol directories?

Personalization
Does the system provide personalization capabilities that are linked to membership in these areas?

Localization

Restrictions to select catalogs

Assignment of discount structure

Merchandising using past and/or related buying history

Contact Management
Does the system contain built-in contact management capabilities?

Will Toromont employees be able to add an entry to the contact management database containing date, time, topic, action items, etc.?

Is the system capable of displaying a contact thread for a company, an employee of the company, or a transaction?

Does the system provide numerous views of the data?

Can the system issue alerts to Toromont employees based on follow-up entries in the system?

Catalog
Please describe the database and physical platform for the catalog being recommended in this solution.

Describe the fault-tolerant aspects of the catalog database and the scalability features.

Please describe the category structure or the hierarchical structure of the catalog.

Please describe the scope of attributes that can be assigned to categories or products.

Does the system provide for manual data entry of products into the catalog?

Shopping Cart
Can buyers easily add and remove products from the shopping cart?

Can the system automatically route back a quotation that is linked to the original shopping cart?

Merchandising
Does the system have banner ad functionality or integration with third-party ad products?

Does the system include an ad manager that controls the timing of the ads and frequency of the message?

Can the banner ads be personalized?

Does the system contain cross-sell, up-sell, and substitute-sell capabilities?

Does the system provide for direct E-mail capabilities? With personalization?

Order Processing
The sales order generated from the shopping process will need to generate purchase orders either automatically or manually, depending on how the component is acquired. Describe this process in the proposed solution.

Describe the integration facilities for exporting a copy of generated purchase orders to the legacy order processing system.

Is the order process implemented as a configurable work flow? (A work flow means it is easy for developers to add events and rearrange the sequence of events in the order process.)

Does the order process accommodate off-catalog purchases?

Describe the functionality of the shipping component.

Do you integrate with third-party shipping components?

Describe the payment options in the order process

Describe the fulfillment capabilities of the system. (This includes both digital and physical fulfillment.)

Does the system incorporate receiving capabilities that indicate when a customer has received a product?

Describe the search capabilities for locating and reviewing all open orders. Can the customer perform his or her own search on the open order history?

Can the customer change an order?

Does the system provide the ability to save a previous order for resubmission in the future?

Describe the capabilities of the E-commerce solution to allow customers to return product.

Customer Service and Support
Summarize the technical service and support capabilities you offer (if you are a software vendor).

Summarize the customer service and support capabilities you offer (if you are a service bureau, host, or other service provider).

Do you provide customer support over the Web? Do you provide 24-by-7 phone support?

Do you provide service-level agreements?

Is training available or required for Toromont or its customers? Do you provide the training or is it provided through partners?

Does the system provide a discussion database or instant-messaging functionality for tracking down problems with an order?

Technical Specifications
Platforms
Describe the Web platforms being recommended for this solution. Describe the configuration of the Web application servers and the volume of users that can be supported.

Describe the platform that will be used for the commerce application servers.

Describe the number of application servers that are recommended for this solution.

Describe the Web client platforms that are supported by this solution.

Describe any plug-ins that will be required, or if this is a Java client that must be downloaded on first use.

Architecture
How will the system integrate with Toromont's legacy systems?

What is the architecture/development methodology or process that will be used to develop the system?

System Services
Does the system employ a transaction-processing monitor?

Does the system incorporate a message queue?

Describe the remote administration capabilities.

Describe the distributed object model used in the proposed solution.

Describe the communication methods from the Web server to the application server.

Describe the communications methods between all servers in the solution.

Describe how requests are allocated to the application servers.

Describe the state and session management capabilities of the solution.

Describe the overall scalability of the solution.

Does the solution use a database connection pool?

Describe the solution's failover capabilities. The system must operate at all times.

Describe the data backup, restoration and disaster-recovery procedures.

Deployment
Installation, Site Planning, and Training
Provide a high-level schedule of activities for implementation.

Describe the project-management team, roles, and responsibilities for your staff.

Describe the roles and responsibilities of Toromont staff and the type of skills required.

Describe the staging methodology that will be employed to move code from development to test to production.

Provide a proposed schedule of training following the phases of deployment.

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