Order Management Software System and eCommerce Software Solution: On-Demand or Licensed

The explosive growth of eCommerce caught most direct marketers by surprise.  From 1996 to 2001, they dealt with this new sales channel through minimal budgets and handed the merchandising responsibility to their IT departments.  As eCommerce sales grew double digits, from 2002 to 2004, companies realized that eCommerce was not a fad but a source of sales growth and customers.  Companies started transferring ownership, along with sizable budgets, to their merchandising and marketing professionals.  The eCommerce sales channel became a major revenue stream.

But the explosive growth of eCommerce, first running on custom-built applications and later on customized platforms, brought with it a more complex set of problems – such as “how to”.

• adjust eCommerce merchandising without requiring IT intervention
• coordinate all customer facing sales channels to appear “as one brand”
• test, measure and refine marketing and merchandising efforts

Systemax, a leading multi-channel retailer of computers, electronics, and industrial products in North America and Europe, had already gone through the more fundamental stages described above.  Their brands had already succeeded at becoming a model of eCommerce excellence within their respective verticals.  Of course, with success came a whole new set of challenges, such as the:

• cost of enhancing their “3rd party customized eCommerce platform”
• redundant effort of coordinating multiple sales channel specific systems
• tracking cross-channel purchases to maximize campaign effectiveness
• latency and lack of uniformity, when reporting from multiple systems

In 2003 Systemax began to build the ProfitCenter Software eCommerce and Order Management software solutions.  The goal was to:

1. Create an eCommerce Platform and Order Management System that can be used “one without the other” or combined as “a single multi-channel system”: one database, one administration environment and one branded customer experience
2. eliminate mature 3rd party solutions, by creating improved versions from scratch
3. use internet technology as the common development platform and access channel
4. maximize efficiency by building rules-based automation: to manage by exception

After having implemented a Systemax company that had over $100 million in sale, ProfitCenter Software was announced as a commercially available software system in 2005.

Our goal is to grow conservatively, by servicing customers with new and established eCommerce, Catalog, Multi-channel and Retail companies having annual sales between $5 and $500 million.
Just some of the multi-channel industries serviced by the ProfitCenter Software eCommerce and Order Management software solutions are: