MARKETNG COMMUNICATIONS

Information System and Technology and Marketing Applications



Information System and Technology and Marketing Applications

Introduction

In today's unpredictable, ever changing market, many businesses, from small entrepreneurs to large corporations, have been looking forward for other business alternatives in order to enhance their productivities as well as profitability. With the help of technology development Electronic Commerce (e-commerce) has emerged. E-commerce is best described as the process of buying and selling or exchanging of products, services, and information via computer networks including the Internet. (Chekitan 2005)

Discussion

Using the Internet as a tool to help companies such as G.W. Pergault find success and harmony in customer's ordering product via Internet, salespeople gaining an incentive for can initially be different; however, the outcome will benefit the organization, the customer and the sale rep. (Allen 1994)

G.W. Pergault, Inc. is an established $4.2 billion dollar supplier of maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products and has sold items such as, pipe fittings, light bulbs, ladders and thousands of others to customers throughout North America since 1952. G.W Pergault's main selling tool is an extensive mail order catalog which has grown to over 4,000 pages. In 1997, the catalog was put online however, the majority of the sales rely on the process where a G.W Pergault rep meets with a purchasing agent from the customer firm face-to-face and a hand-written order is created. The rep will fax in the customers order to headquarters where the clerical staff enters the information into the system for delivery. Within three business days the order is packaged and shipped to the customer.

Ken Sutton, the sales manager for G.W. Pergault is responsible for overseeing 15 salespeople who perform this face-to-face customer order process. Recently, G.W. Pergault hired a new President, Celia Fiorni. (Adelman 2000) Fiorni is a fervent believer in the technology industry and has a vision of e-commerce that Sutton's salespeople oppose because her goal is to move a larger percentage of the reps' sales to the company website in addition to encouraging and training the customers to place their orders through the website. Most of G.W. Pergaults customers vary in size and are relatively small accounts that purchase supplies directly through their paper catalog or website without communicating with a G.W. Pergault salesperson. Although 80 percent of the customers are aggregate orders the remaining 20 percent are the larger revenue accounts and the sales generated from these customers represent about 80 percent of G.W. Pergault's total sales. (Chekitan 2005)

Fiorni believes the majority of the customer orders from all clients should be performed online. The new company website Fiorni had G.W. Pergault invest in resulted in customers finding it is too flashy and not user friendly, not to mention, overwhelming, since F.W. Pergault offers more than 500,000 different products to choose from. Sutton feels caught in the middle between his boss who wants to implicate this new system; but his subordinates have concerns; one major concern being that there is no commission made when a customer places an order through their website - why would ...