TechArchive

Original article date: July 2000

The other day, I installed a telephone extension socket. The kit from B&Q included the cable and clips, the new socket, and all the instructions for tapping into the existing BT socket.

Wiring into the new socket was an annoyingly fiddly job, and I was not looking forward to something similar at the other end of the cable. But when I got to the BT socket, I found that it featured insulation displacement connectors. The connection took about a minute, of which 50 seconds was deciding which wire went where!

It struck me that the BT socket is designed for professionals whose time costs money. Saving 20 minutes of an installation engineer by spending 50p on a better socket makes clear financial sense. The socket at the other end, however, is designed for the DIY market, where no-one’s time costs anything and the cost on the superstore shelf is what rules the day.

It’s exactly the same with purchasing things over the net. I will spend 20 minutes on a Saturday morning mucking about with a website trying to buy a book because it is 50p cheaper than going into town and buying it from a shop. It is also more convenient and I can probably locate the book I want quicker.

However, a professional purchaser is not the same as a Saturday shopper. Asking a purchasing department to buy pneumatics over the web is not going to save them a trip into a city centre shopping mall, and it is unlikely to save them time finding the goods.

Often someone other than the purchasing department specifies the parts first. So if the purchasing department has a standard process which is well rehearsed, maybe semi-automated, and is possibly documented in its ISO9000 operating procedures, how does buying over the net save any money? Bear in mind that the purchasing department still has to produce an order document that can be stored within its standard system, so most of the info is almost certainly going to have to be keyed in twice.

Now, of course, there are different types of customer. A maintenance engineer might find a broken cylinder, dash back to his/her office, find a replacement on the web, and place an order there and then. But a machine designer will almost certainly take a different approach. In a typical product, the designer will first specify any standard components, and then design any custom components around them. With that done, the long lead time custom components will be ordered. At some later date, the standard parts will be ordered, such that their delivery coincides with that of the custom parts.

So for standard parts, the specifying and buying events are weeks apart.

Now, bearing in mind all of that, who exactly is the target user of a website where you choose a pneumatic cylinder and then hit “add to shopping basket”?

So this is a heartfelt plea to all suppliers thinking of building a new e-commerce site to sell parts to engineering companies:

• Take a minute to think about what your customers’ business processes are like, and try and supply something to help them with that.

• Make logging in to the site easy – how many passwords do you think one person can remember?

• Make CAD drawings and PDF manuals quick and easy to find and download

• Build a page that does all the design calculations

• Build a page that allows me to check stock

• Make a facility so people with only email can make queries to an autoresponder

• And please, don’t try and second guess how I purchase things, and don’t spend millions on a flash purchasing site that could have been better spent on better products or literature.

July 2000