Overview

Amano is looking to replace an existing Business-to-Consumer (B2C) website (www.amano.com) with a WebSphere Commerce solution. The current site is written in Cold Fusion and is used by customers to find product details and then to place an order or to find a dealer from the 50-100 that is closest to them to place an order.   The following are the goals and objectives of the Amano implementation:

  1. Improve the presentation of Amano Products and Accessories, and to facilitate solution based offerings via a logical catalog hierarchy.
  2. Achieve quick results and reduce time to deployment as a result of the excellent array of existing functionality in the ConsumerDirect starter store.
  3. Increase Amano brand awareness via Highlights and Featured Products.
  4. Enhance customer loyalty.
  5. Increase revenue.
  6. Increase traffic to Amano.com store leveraging Search Engine Optimization (future phase).

Reference Site

http://store.amano.com

Reference Image

Customer Background

Amano USA Holdings, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amano Corporation in Japan and receives the support of a worldwide organization generation in excess of $700 million in annual revenues and 2,900 employees worldwide. For more than 40 years, Amano USA Holdings, Inc. has delivered innovative solutions through its business divisions which include:

  •   Parking System & Solution,
  •   Time Management,
  •   Security & Access Management Solution,
  •   Floor Care Products & System

Business Solution

Amano selected the industry leading WebSphere Commerce software from IBM as their base eCommerce software and using WebSphere Commerce Messaging framework to communicate with their existing Backend Office application. They turned to CrossView for the architecture and development expertise needed to implement the WebSphere Commerce solution.

The new website leverages the out-of-box capabilities for a B2C implementation of WebSphere Commerce and will pass orders and receive order status from the existing RPG back end system. Amano current environment is i-series on an AS/400 platform.   In later phases, Amano will develop a B2B site using WebSphere Commerce including the use of features such as contracts and pricing management. They will also look at integrating features of a portal implementation.

Key Features

WebSphere Commerce Benefits:

  1. Member Subsystem for Registration and Login.
  2. Incorporation of Wish List functionality.
  3. Catalog Subsystem for organization of dynamic Catalog Hierarchy.
  4. Ability to quickly load a feature rich product catalog highlights product specifications and benefits.
  5. Dynamic Product display based on buyable flag.
  6. Ability to integrate with an existing web application with similar design so that dual sites appear as single, unified user experience (www.amano.com and store.amano.com).
  7. Ability to integrate with Shipping, Taxation, and Payment solutions from 3rd party vendors UPS, StrikeIron, and VeriSign.
  8. Extensible messaging framework allowing for exchange of Order Capture, Order Status, and Inventory messages with a backoffice i5/OS application.