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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patrick E.McDaniel who wrote (151530)	1/18/2000 2:18:00 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 176387

Pat, Have fun with your new Dell! Mine arrived ahead of schedule. I have not seen this article posted and found it tonight. FYI. :) Leigh upside.com "It would have helped if the two most obvious poster children of b-to-b sell-side e-commerce weren't such damn fine operating companies. Both Dell and Cisco show operational and developmental excellence in far more than Internet applications. Both firms spent a great deal of resources on building, deploying, and tuning their sell side e-commerce systems." The Secret Trials of E-Commerce Nothin' But Net January 14, 2000 by Aaron Goldberg By looking solely at e-commerce advertising, you'd think you could instantly and easily operate a world class e-commerce system that "gives you two dollars back for every dollar you invest before the end of the year," as last year's IBM ads claimed. Would that this were true. The companies that do the best job of integrating the Web side with the legacy side will be the winners. As with most things on the Internet, the applications and systems that jumped off the page initially are being supplanted by new requirements that are neither simplistic nor easy. The e-commerce segment is now finding out that this business is much more challenging than it originally thought. The market, the vendors, and even many of the pundits have been spoiled by a first generation of "buy side" e-commerce software systems that are fairly simple. Some of the offerings here are no more than business-to-business shopping bots that find low prices or sweet deals from some price sheet published on the Web. While many buy-side systems are more than specialized bots, they remain simple because they require little, if any, integration with traditional legacy systems on the customer side. All in all, purchasing is a fairly straightforward activity. As the benefits from buying online became apparent, many companies figured that selling online would be just as beneficial and easy. But unfortunately, selling online is an entirely different kettle of fish. True "sell side" e-commerce means that a whole raft of information must be included in the system. For example, many firms have different discount schedules for different classes of customers, or even individual customers. Some customers lease products so the transaction has to reflect the relationship with a lessor. Don't forget the myriad of shipping and delivery options, or calculating the right rate of co-op funds, rebate dollars, or whatever other financial inducements the customer is entitled to. For those with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, the transaction also has a huge impact on manufacturing and inventory systems. And that's only the beginning. One larger company I know has 18 sets of information that impacted by each individual sale. And all 18 systems are legacy systems. From my perspective, the companies that do the best job of integrating the Web side with the legacy side will be the winners in this space. Only small firms with few individual customer requirements will be able to effectively reconstruct the existing data feeds in a brand new Web application. The market for sell-side systems that integrate with the Web for medium- and large-sized firms has already sprung up. For example, Haht Software focuses on integrating Web sell-side software with SAP systems. That kind of focused approach will be the hallmark of most sell-side systems in this early stage. It would have helped if the two most obvious poster children of b-to-b sell-side e-commerce weren't such damn fine operating companies. Both Dell and Cisco show operational and developmental excellence in far more than Internet applications. Both firms spent a great deal of resources on building, deploying, and tuning their sell side e-commerce systems. But unfortunately for the rest of us, neither firm provides a whole lot of internal details on these systems -- other than the public aspects of Cisco's order management system, or Dell's Premier Pages. Their e-commerce efforts seem easy because the hard parts are hidden. Lately, the mere mortal companies are finding out that sell-side systems are a lot more work than buying their building's janitorial supplies online. But -- and it's a big but -- building the sell-side systems provides an even greater financial reward than buy-side applications. Look at the numbers. Depending on the firm, order processing costs can run from 2 to 9 percent of the selling price. Factor in the costs for orders that are mis-keyed or returned because the customer over-ordered, and then add on the costs from having have to hold more inventory because your order cycle is four days long. You can already see the financial incentive to invest in a sell-side system is huge. The move to more complex sell-side systems will bring about other changes. For example, the development periods for most Internet applications will be far longer than the typical 2 to 3 months, but the payback will also be much greater. Some companies expect to reduce 2 to 3 percentage points of cost from their business model using Internet based sell-side systems. If you are a $10 billion company, that's real money. Looks like we're finally seeing the kind of savings and efficiency improvements that so far have been an unfulfilled promise on the Net. Aaron Goldberg is executive VP of Ziff-Davis Market Intelligence. He has spent 21 years analyzing the computer industry.

To: Patrick E.McDaniel who wrote (151530)	1/18/2000 9:26:00 AM
From: BBG	Respond to of 176387

>>>I ordered my new desktop tonight< Congratulations Patrick... and thanks for doing your part to make DELL what will surely be the best shareholder value of the 1st decade of this new millnieum... If you're going to get a new laptop next I highly recommend the INSPIRON 7500 with the 15.4" screen and all of the bells and whistles that are available... I absolutely love mine... It's the best computer I have ever owned... I'll bet your system arrives well before Feb. 8th... As Kemble is fond of saying... "Under promise and over deliver..." Go DELL BBG

To: Patrick E.McDaniel who wrote (151530)	1/19/2000 2:59:00 PM
From: D. Swiss	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 176387

Pat, after talking with Kemble last night, I had a dream that Abby Joseph Cohen came out and said that Goldman was raising Dell to its Top Pick on its Recommended List and it traded at $57 in after hours trading. Oh well, I guess it was just a dream. :o) Drew