Success Stories

Ross Barna, director of business development for RAB Lighting, Inc., couldn't believe how easy it was. Two months after going live with Activant Prelude™, the Northvale, New Jersey lighting manufacturer and distributor added Prelude's VIA (Virtual Information Access) module - and 30 days later, their e-commerce site was online, taking orders.

Barna shared his experience with fellow Prelude customers at a user conference. "We went from goals to strategy to features to implementation to success, just about that fast," says Barna. "Our aim was to make everything easy for customers and reps, and to have the best Web site of all our competitors up and running in 30 days."

Using Prelude's VIA as their starting point, RAB's implementation team focused on customizing a few key features and the look of the site. Two internal programmers skilled in HTML, JSP (Java) and basic web design worked with the VIA team to implement the plan.

"VIA already had what we needed, so we didn't do a lot of reprogramming," remarks Barna. Open order inquiries, order tracking, order history, order entry, and price and availability features remained unchanged. Only the expediting, sign-up form and warehouse availability features were customized.

The program was loaded onto an IBM x 330 P4 running Windows 2000 server software, Microsoft IIS and New Atlanta ServletExec 4.1.1.

The first site to go live was RepNet, RAB's Internet portal to the factory floor. Within days of the launch, 225 users were online, answering customer questions and taking orders. ezRAB, RAB's customer portal, went online next, building up to 500 users in two months, followed by RAB's Supplier Extranet, bringing the company's supply chain into the fold.

"Initially, we had to promote the site to our various user bases," Barna explains. "But the sites were all so well done and easy to use, our customers, reps and suppliers instantly took to them, and now we're processing more than 15 percent of our sales over the Internet."

Currently, RAB is averaging 12,000 monthly logons to their Web sites, with 6,000 price and availability checks per month. Their 10-minute order fulfillment process translates to timesavings, leading to 12 percent revenue growth without additional staff.

So how good is the RAB site compared to others in the industry? According to one customer, "It's better than 3M's Web site."

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