Is Your Company Ready for the Web?

                        Are You Ready for the Web? New E-Business Service Helps
Manufacturers Chart Best Course to Becoming Web-enabled

Fort Lee, New Jersey, March 27 --For most manufacturers, the big question isn't whether to become web-enabled - that's a given - but how best to do it. To answer this question, Herbert W. Davis and Company has introduced a service that assesses a company's e-business potential, prioritizes its opportunities, and then guides the actual implementation.

"We assess companies across their major functional areas and then develop a business model showing how the company would operate if it were fully web-enabled," said William H. Drumm, president of the Fort Lee, NJ consulting firm. "We then help clients decide what to pursue first, based on such factors as cost, difficulty and return on investment. The goal is less to cut costs than to fuel growth - to grow the business explosively by being on-line all the time with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders."

The assessment service evaluates a company's e-business potential across 15 functions including procurement, manufacturing, warehousing, transportation, sales, customer relations, and finance. It also helps companies match their specific e-business opportunities with appropriate software vendors and service providers.

"Being 'web-enabled' is a lot bigger than just buying and selling over the Internet," said Drumm. "It means that you can handle all kinds of business transactions faster, cheaper and more accurately than your non-enabled competitors - both internally and externally. Web-enabling also creates new opportunities. For instance, by making volume purchases for the company via the Internet, you can gain the scale needed for volume discounts. And you can greatly reduce the time it takes to order and receive goods and, in that way, eliminate the kinds of 'maverick' purchases that occur when people are forced by time constraints to go outside the usual purchasing channels."

Drumm points out that some pioneering manufacturers are already ordering supplies, parts and raw materials via the Internet and predicts that most companies will soon be able to order virtually anything over the web.

"Web-enabled manufacturers use on-line marketplaces to purchase all kinds of products, as well as for selling their own products," he said. "In the case of custom-designed parts and equipment, detailed specs are available on the seller's web site, speeding the process of alteration to meet your own requirements and fast delivery. By communicating over the web, you save time, eliminate a lot of paperwork and greatly reduce the chance for errors. Similarly, by becoming web-enabled, you make it much easier for your customers and suppliers to check on orders, deliveries, payments and credits, again eliminating a vast amount of paper and the errors that paperwork fosters."

   Herbert W. Davis and Company provides consulting services in such areas as logistics, manufacturing, customer service, supply chain management and computer support systems. During the past 25 years, the firm has completed more than 1,000 engagements for clients in North America and Europe. For more information about the e-business assessment service, readers can contact William Drumm at (201) 944-5580.

# # #