Background
Royal Philips Electronics is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 37.9 billion in 2000. It is a global leader in colour picture tubes for televisions and monitors, one-chip TV products, lighting and medical systems. Its 219,400 employees are active in more than 60 countries and Philips is quoted on the NYSE, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and other stock exchanges.
In consumer electronics, Philips' key products include Digital TV, Flat Screen TV, DVD, Internet TV and Audio CD Recorders. Philips CE is a division of Philips Electronics Ltd and is responsible for the marketing, distribution and after sales service for home and mobile entertainment products throughout the UK.
Distribution - The Business Issues
During the 1980's Philips had, along with most of the consumer electronics suppliers in the UK, set up a dealer communication system using Videotext technology. This connected high street dealers via dial-up connections directly into the Philips order processing applications for products and spare parts. Although this dealer network had served Philips well over the years, Videotext was an aging technology not readily adaptable for solving the developing business issues of faster communications, easy access to information and the development of pan European approaches.
Philips UK recognised early on that a web-based service could offer all of the services needed to meet the growing demands of its high street dealers. A high street dealer is typically a small, independent reseller who sells and/or services Philips equipment along with other competitive products from other manufacturers. The larger national multiple chains were not included as they were already connected electronically through an EDI service.
The prime requirement was to extend the existing applications for product availability, order processing and account status enquiries without any dealer installed software. A browser-based service was the only option from the dealer viewpoint. They did not want to be loading client software from each manufacturer they dealt with.
After a lengthy vendor evaluation exercise Philips chose Modcomp to design and build what is known as the Philips DealerWeb Portal.
Moving Toward an E-Portal Strategy
After the initial requirements capture phase Modcomp proposed an E-portal solution based on ViewMax - its own application integration middleware server. The scope of the project was agreed along with a series of deliverables/web services:
Retail Ordering
This covers all of the functionality provided by the existing Viewdata, call centre and manual fax/postal systems including product and price enquiry, product ordering, order acknowledgement, order status, shipping status, invoice status, account balance.
Service Document Control System
This allows Philips service managers to add, delete or modify published collateral lists remotely over the web. Dealers can view the lists and order the documents they need.
Service Related Publications
Philips service agents can access a wide range of documentary material to assist them in their day-to-day operations. For example, the following categories are supported:
- How-To' documents show dealers the way to operate within the Philips CE production and after-sales agreements
- 'At Your Service' magazine promotes a spirit of belonging and engagement between the dealers and the Philips organisation
- 'Spares Offers' details service equipment and consumables offered to dealers at attractive prices by Philips
- 'Price File' offers a full spares price list in a variety of formats to suit all dealerships
- 'Service News Letters' provide topical information from the Philips Service Competence Centre
- 'Training' offers a full menu of information, data sheets, contact links and feedback concerning all aspect of technical training in the UK
- 'System News' keeps the dealership up-to-date with developments and availability of the DealerNet system itself
- Email messaging and forwarding. A user input form allows dealers or remote Philips personnel to send a message to departments within the Philips UK organisation.
Registrations and Access Control
Each dealer is profiled in detail, allowing administrators to permit or deny access to almost every one of the applications, whether interactive or 'static', within DealerNet or through its portal to external systems. This fine control supersedes the concept of groups and allows administrative control to match the system to the individual dealer with supreme accuracy and flexibility.
Sales and marketing Management Functions
Sales performance graphs are presented in real time as java charts for remote access by the Philips account manager and the dealer. Client specific promotional allowances are displayed to the dealer and the Philips product managers.
Security
All dealer communications are via a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) mechanism, providing full commercial standards of security against interception. Additionally, a Client (browser) Certificate mechanism has been engineered to allow reliable user authentication without the need for dealers to obtain and remember ID and passwords, which Philips CE would have to issue and maintain. The Client Certificate exchange works in conjunction with profiling to authenticate and customise every dealer access - quickly, accurately and securely, with the lowest possible maintenance overhead.
Conclusion
E-business portals provide huge benefits to organisations and their business partners. Communicating and transacting directly with existing back office applications 24 hours a day and obtaining up to date information in real time is a critical factor when selling and servicing consumer products. Since the roll out of the DealerWeb service to the UK dealer population during spring 2000, Philips have seen the level of business steadily rise to overtake all other methods. Within one year 50% of spares orders were being processed over the web with 30% via EDI and 20% via the call centre.
As Philips IT Manager Dave Courtney commented "The Modcomp E-portal implementation has far exceeded our expectations, not only in the ease of administration but in the dealer uptake of the service. The modular approach taken by Modcomp in using commercial off the shelf software and hardware components means that we are not tied in to a bespoke solution and can easily add additional functionality e.g. content management applications in the future."