Xtras Implements Off-the-Shelf E-Commerce Solution; Sales Jump!

What does a fast-growing company with a small technical staff and too many development projects do when they need to add Internet sales? Go modular! Using affordable off-the-shelf components, Xtras created a customized solution that integrates seamlessly with their existing systems. Four months later, sales are already up 15 percent!

"This whole project was amazingly easy to do. By implementing our system based on Windows DNA, we were able to create a component-based solution that does exactly what we want it to do. It didn't cost us a fortune; it didn't take a lot of time to develop; and it made it real easy to integrate Internet and client/server components. And in just a few months, we're already beginning to see increased revenues."

Mike Schinkel, President of Xtras

Situation

Xtras, Inc. Non-MS link was founded in March 1994 and is an Atlanta-based mail order software reseller that specializes in third-party development tools for Microsoft® Visual Basic® and third-party network administration tools for Windows NT® Server and the BackOffice® family. Xtras has enjoyed strong growth in the last three years and now employs over 30 people.

As at other small companies, everyone at Xtras wears multiple hats and works long hours. Xtras needed a fast and affordable way to expand customer service and generate higher revenues without ramping up staff. The answer? Expand their service capability to process orders directly over the Internet.

Xtras needed an affordable electronic commerce solution that easily integrated with their existing customer database. What to do? Try to build a custom solution from scratch? Hire an outside development team to build a solution? Or buy an off-the-shelf solution that could be customized to meet their needs? Being a small company, they don't have a large internal development group to call on.

Business Solution

Since their business involves reselling products for developers, Xtras was familiar with the large and growing market of off-the-shelf components for Microsoft® Component Object Model (COM) technologies. Giga Information Group, a market research firm based in Cambridge, MA, estimates that this year's market for third-party Microsoft COM-based component software will be $410 million, a market they expect to grow to $3 billion by 2001. COM is at the heart of Windows® Distributed interNet Architecture (Windows DNA), an integrated approach for building the next generation of Internet and intranet applications that can be delivered over any network.

Xtras decided to create an integrated component-based solution and turned to Sax Software to provide the starting point. Sax Software's NetSell electronic commerce solution is a Windows DNA solution based on COM components for Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) that automates the creation of "Shopping Basket" Web pages. The solution includes a set of design-time ActiveX™ controls that automate the creation of Web pages and server components that work with Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS).

Before this solution, the creation of such pages has been a difficult process of writing, testing, and debugging CGI scripts, HTML, or Java™ applets. But with this solution, "Shopping Basket" pages are achievable just by adding the control to your Web pages and setting a few properties. NetSell's design-time ActiveX controls create all the Active Server code automatically.

Design-time ActiveX controls offer developers all the benefits of component software, such as plug-and-play capabilities and visual editing at design time. But unlike conventional ActiveX controls, design-time controls include no binary run-time component; instead, these controls generate HTML-based content, viewable by any standard browser on any platform.

Xtras looked to Windows DNA to help them integrate the NetSell components with their existing customer database, creating a customized e-commerce solution that met their business requirements. Windows DNA defines a comprehensive set of integrated services to support modern, scalable, multi-tier applications that embraces and integrates the Internet, client/server, and component object technologies.

The Xtras solution, created by their development team in just a month, uses two servers to accommodate future growth. The first server runs IIS and the NetSell components that handle customer registration, shopping basket features, and catalog page production via Active Server Pages (ASP). The components communicate via distributed COM (DCOM) to a second server running MTS and the order-processing components that Xtras had already built to handle the orders from their mail order catalogs. The whole system is tied into their customer database system developing in the Microsoft Visual Basic programming system with Microsoft SQL Server™ as the back-end database.

This solution allows Web customers to browse an online catalog, add orders to a Shopping Basket, modify their orders, and submit them to the Web server for processing. It performs custom data validation and keeps track of a site's transactions automatically, logging all activity to a customizable database file. The solution also includes an easy-to-use Administrator application that lets Web administrators keep track of orders.

Benefits

With the help of Windows DNA, Xtras has built and deployed an affordable and customized e-commerce solution that integrates easily with existing applications and data. Xtras was able to purchase affordable off-the-shelf components to create the base of the solution and quickly build upon that by integrating their own COM components. By using components, Xtras met their requirements for extensibility and modularity and they now have a system that provides for future growth due to its ability to scale. The result is that Xtras has become more productive and responsive to customer needs.

Since going live on June 2, 1997, approximately 15 percent of Xtras' total sales now come in from their Web site. In addition, they now have the capability to receive and process orders 24 hours a day from around the world. By implementing their system based on Windows DNA, Xtras was able to meet its goal of creating an affordable e-commerce solution in a short amount of time.

For More Information

For additional information about Microsoft products, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft office.

Microsoft Products Used
  • COM
  • Distributed COM
  • Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) version 3.0
  • Microsoft Transaction Server
  • Microsoft SQL Server version 6.5
  • Microsoft Visual Basic®

Other Products Used
  • Sax NetSell from Sax Software Corp.

Web Sites


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