Glenn, off topic. I find this interesting but I assume its more for the custom Austrian jeweler.
>All That Glitters: It would seem like a golden business. Oegussa, an Austrian subsidiary of German specialty-chemicals group Degussa-Huels AG, produces gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals. About half of its annual revenue of about 40 million euros ($34.7 million) comes from bulk sales to laboratories and other industrial customers. That's the easy part. The other half, and the much harder part, comes from its work as banker for a network of 2,000 Austrian jewelers who contract with artisans making rings, bracelets and necklaces. This tough business involves thousands of very small transactions between jewelers and craftsmen, sometimes involving quantities as small as 25 grams. Oegussa maintains accounts in both cash and metals for jewelers and artisans. When a jeweler contracts for some work, he has Oegussa transfer the required metal to his craftsman's account. The artist then either picks up the metal or has it delivered.
Margin Pressure: Without an efficient way to manage this stream of small deals, administrative costs could gobble up the company's profit margin. "It is a lot of work for us, and it isn't easy for our customers if they have to do a lot of paperwork for each transaction," says Oegussa Managing Director Marcus Fasching. Oegussa long ago installed a "back office" system from SAP AG to manage the cash and metals accounts. But until recently, the company was still handling orders on paper. Jewelers would send sell orders by fax or mail, after which clerks would type the data into the SAP system. "It could take up to a week to complete a sale," Mr. Fasching says.
Enter the Web: The Internet opened new possibilities. If jewelers could send orders via the Web, Oegussa could save time and money and offer customers greater convenience. The trick was finding a way to pull orders from the Net and funnel them directly into the SAP system. Oegussa found a solution from Impress Software Inc., a German software maker that specializes in building links that connect enterprise applications from SAP and other companies directly to the Internet. Impress's Online Information System, or OIS, enabled Oegussa to set up a Web site where jewelers can check the status of their accounts, place orders and view past transactions.
Hold the Phone: But that isn't the best part. Jewelers in Austria don't always have access to computers. So Oegussa is taking advantage of Europe's digital-mobile-phone network, which transmits data as well as voice signals, and WAP (wireless application protocol) technology, which allows phones to display data from Web pages. Impress has built WAP capabilities into its OIS product. For the past month, 10 of Oegussa's jewelers have been dialing into a WAP-enabled OIS server, which can access the SAP system. Using their phone's keypad, callers can access any account information and place orders 24 hours a day. "They can call up and it's done," says Mr. Fasching, who plans to show off the system to other customers and jewelers at an industry conference in Salzburg this week. "It reduces costs, but this really makes it easy for our customers to do business with us," he said. "That's a big competitive advantage." |
