When GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, one of the world’s largest over-the-counter products companies, wanted to redesign its network of smoking cessation web sites and re-architect how it delivers and manages eMarketing campaigns in the United States, it engaged technology partner Ciber along with interactive agency partner RTC Relationship Marketing. Ciber used Microsoft® Commerce Server 2002, Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000, and the Microsoft .NET Framework to create a campaign management framework for targeting and personalization, and a unified consumer data repository.

Hershey Direct, the Hershey Foods division that is responsible for e-commerce sales to consumers and corporate customers, designed, developed, and launched its new online store within five months of project kickoff. The redesigned site reflects the high-quality Hershey brand and provides consistency in printed and online catalog brand presentation. Built with Microsoft® Commerce Server 2002 on the Microsoft .NET Framework, the site provides Hershey with in-house control of content and product merchandising. The site’s consumer-centric design enables easy browsing and searching, as well as a streamlined checkout process. Hershey’s return on investment in the new site is reflected in increased sales, larger orders, and a shift in orders from traditional channels to the Web site.

Levy Restaurants, a growing restaurant and hospitality company, wanted to overhaul its Web site to better reflect its brand online. The site needed to be easy to update and make it easy to deliver information to a diverse audience base, including potential employees, patrons, partners, and the media. Levy Restaurants decided to build its new site using Microsoft® Solution for Internet Business, including Microsoft ASP.NET, Content Management Server 2002, and Commerce Server 2002 Enterprise Edition. The solution gave Levy a consolidated environment in which to extend its brand online yet helped to lower the cost of site maintenance and employee recruiting. With the solution, the company also increased revenue, seeing private bookings increase 5 percent and restaurant bookings from the Web site double in the first five weeks after launch.

Originally a mail-order fashion retailer, Bon’A Parte Postshop A/S (Bon’A Parte) believes the immediacy and convenience of online shopping matches its target audience of busy professional women. Bon’A Parte wanted in 2002 to expand its business through a new online storefront. The company needed a reliable business-to-consumer portal solution to grow its online business. Bon’A Parte chose Microsoft® Commerce Server 2002 and integrated it with an in-house mainframe order system. Since launching the new site, Bon’A Parte has increased online sales by 80 percent, increased the average value of a sales transaction, and improved its customers’ shopping experience—at the same time reducing site management costs.

Pellerano & Herrera, a prestigious law firm in the Dominican Republic, traditionally conducted business using a largely manual and decentralized communication and data-dissemination process. To address the inefficiencies of this approach, the firm deployed an information-management Web portal based on the Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000, Microsoft ASP.NET, and Web services. As a result, the firm is using its technology more efficiently, streamlining processes, and simplifying archiving and case tracking. The firm's 200 employees work more collaboratively since they can now access an archive of 240,000 documents through a single, centralized point. The firm's 60-plus forms used for gathering information are interactive, helping to ensure they collect comprehensive information. Case-tracking is fully automated and centrally accessible.

The U.K. Department for Education and Skills (DfES) is developing communication and information services for schools that offer users flexibility and choice. A key goal is to develop new forms of communication that put schools in charge of the information they receive so there is less paper and better use of technology, more up-to-date information and ideas, and better support for high standards of teaching and learning. Working with Capgemini, the Department for Education and Skills deployed a Microsoft® Windows®–based integration solution that uses Web services to provide the links between an online ordering system and a third-party fulfillment company. The solution provides greater choice to schools by allowing users to order just the documents they need.

Tejari has developed one of the leading business-to-business (B2B) e-marketplaces in the Middle East and is expanding rapidly both geographically and by industry. Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Tejari transformed its front-end portal in order to maintain this momentum. Within six months its partner, LINKdotNET, created a portal that gives Tejari lower total cost of ownership and provides members with a vastly improved service, including personalization and faster access to more relevant information. The portal is now integrated in a more dynamic way with the marketplace, which allows Tejari to gather information about its customers in order to target products more accurately. The Microsoft .NET solution is also highly scalable in order to accommodate an expected trebling in the user base over the next three years.

As South Africa’s leading apparel retailer, Edgars Consolidated Stores’ (Edcon) Web presence is extremely important in supporting the brand. But due to software licensing fees, the company was faced with escalating costs as the site’s popularity grew. It worked with partners 3fifteen and Internet Solutions (IS) to rebuild the site using the Microsoft® .NET Framework and create an e-commerce solution using Microsoft Commerce Server 2002 and Microsoft Content Management Server 2002. By doing so, Edcon can now grow its online business using local talent.

WESCO is a major global distributor of industrial and electrical parts and supplies. A former division of Westinghouse, WESCO works with more than 24,000 suppliers to distribute products to more than 100,000 enterprise customers around the world. In response to increasing customer demands for better, more efficient online ordering, WESCO deployed a flexible, tightly integrated e-commerce solution built on Microsoft® Windows Server System™. Windows Server System is integrated server infrastructure software that helps IT professionals deliver new business value through simplified solution development, deployment, and management. The result is much higher performance, an easier buying experience for customers, and the potential for signing on customers who, in the past, could not have been WESCO clients because of technical barriers.

Premium TV manages and develops Web sites for 80 UK football clubs across the English Premier League, Football League and Scottish Premier League. While some had online merchandise stores built on legacy technologies, many didn’t have a Web-based retail solution at all. Premium TV engaged Microsoft® partner Snow Valley to develop a CRM solution based on Microsoft Commerce Server 2002. This enables Premium TV to manage online stores across all football clubs, and provide them with user profiling, content targeting and business analytics tools to draw in customers and increase sales. It also enables clubs to manage the day-to-day content themselves with little technical know-how. The improved customer experience has already resulted in club sales of more than £1 million since implementation, an increase from the previous year of almost 300 percent.

The Flower Fields Alliance (FFA) produces flowers and seeds for the North American wholesale market. In 2002, FFA deployed its business-to-business e-commerce hub using Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2002 to exchange customer order and availability information electronically in real time, a significant improvement over faxes, phone calls, and order reentry. Two years later, FFA upgraded to BizTalk Server 2004 for faster order processing, more extensible trading partner management, and enhanced monitoring capabilities. Additionally, with BizTalk Server 2004, development time was significantly reduced using the new tool set that integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003. This enables the alliance to respond more quickly to partner-specific processing needs, providing a faster time-to-value. The group anticipates a 66 percent reduction in order processing time.

Providing a great customer experience to skiers and snowboarders in the Los Angeles, California, area is the core business goal of Mountain High, a resort northeast of the city. To improve customer service and encourage online sales, the resort implemented an e-commerce system that was initially based on the Linux platform. System failures and escalating costs led Mountain High to seek an alternative solution. Working with eBI Solutions, the resort deployed a tightly integrated, reliable, and easily managed e-commerce system using Microsoft® Windows Server System™ software—specifically, Microsoft Commerce Server 2002, Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000, and Windows® 2000 Server. The solution has cut maintenance costs by about 82 percent, has reduced employee workloads, and is improving customer service.

Hutton Communications is distinguished for its knowledgeable, consultative sales process. The company’s Web site, however, was not matching this level of service, as it did not provide for real-time sales transactions or up-to-date product pricing and availability. So, Hutton hired BORN, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, to implement a state-of-the-art e-commerce site running on Microsoft Windows Server System™ and integrated with the company’s PeopleSoft OneWorld Xe ERP system (formerly J.D. Edwards OneWorld Xe). The new site gives customers up-to-the-minute account status and product information, along with many other conveniences. The solution has proved to be of great advantage to Hutton: it has won them large new accounts, dramatically increased customer satisfaction, reduced workloads in sales and IT, and more than doubled the company’s online sales.

Online for three years, RadioShack.ca wanted to improve its site, which is a supportive extension of the retailer’s Canadian stores. RadioShack.ca needed a new, more powerful search engine to help customers find what they want among the 50,000 listed items. It also wanted to make the task of running a multilingual site less administrative intensive. Partnering with Microsoft and HP, RadioShack.ca developed a solution based on Microsoft® Commerce Server 2002 and the Microsoft .NET Framework that will save time and money in managing the site, while also improving the experience for loyal RadioShack Canada shoppers.

EnglandNet was created to support the tourism industry by disseminating product and destination information. To achieve this, it has implemented a national distribution system that allows regional providers to access nationwide and international consumer markets. The system gives the smaller tourism providers access to business enabling technologies they could not otherwise afford. The new system has been developed by partner netdecisions, a systems integrator specialising in the tourism sector. The solution has been developed using the Visual Studio® .NET development system and the Microsoft® .NET Framework, an integral component of Windows that provides a programming model and runtime for Web services, Web applications, and smart client applications. The .NET Framework delivered 15-20% savings in development times.

Oxford Instruments, a leading-edge, medium-sized, scientific technology company catering to global markets, has implemented an online sales channel for spares, consumables, and accessories. The solution is built around Microsoft Commerce Server 2000, and was developed by Domino Systems in partnership with Oxford Instruments. The company has benefited from resource savings in information provision, flexible catalogue extension, multi-channel customer relationship building, and a new resource for adaptable marketing initiatives.

The Presidio Trust manages the interior 80 percent of the Presidio, including most of its 768 buildings and its transportation, utility, and communications infrastructure. The National Park Service manages coastal areas, or approximately 20 percent of the land area. The agencies work together to enhance natural areas and provide visitor services. They also ensure public safety in cooperation with the United States Park Police and the Presidio Fire Department.

IDQ Companies (Dairy Queen) foresees an 80 percent reduction in the amount of time that its information technology (IT) staff spends on maintaining content on the Web portal that provides information to its franchisees and customers. Key to this time savings was replacing a third-party content management solution, which was difficult to use and lacked scalability, with Microsoft® Content Management Server 2002. The deployment team estimates that the upgraded portal required 75 percent less development time than other solutions, which would have required custom-building pages and filters. The new portal gives IDQ the Internet capabilities to drive business to individual franchisee locations, provide a dynamic catalog of products, and allow profiling for targeted marketing campaigns.

The e-commerce experience for customers within the North American division of Wolters Kluwer was inconvenient and inconsistent because the online stores for its three companies were independently maintained. Equipped with Microsoft® E-Business solutions—BizTalk® Server, Content Management Server, and Commerce Server—Wolters Kluwer extended the existing architecture of each company’s online store to create one convenient storefront and a high-quality shopping experience for customers. This powerful solution improved Wolters Kluwer’s ability to create new market opportunities and cross-sell to its entire customer base. In addition, business users are empowered to manage their own online content for timely, accurate online information at lower maintenance costs.

SEI Investments Company developed a turnkey e commerce solution called SEI Max.web QuickSite, which uses Microsoft® Commerce Server 2002. Max.web QuickSite runs on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and uses Microsoft SQL Server 2000 for the database. The Web-based application enables independent money managers to build their own customized Web presence that leverages financial tools from SEI. Max.web QuickSite sets SEI apart from the competition by providing live feeds, calculators, and database information direct from SEI as part of the solution. This dynamically driven Web application is unlike the static, brochure-style sites that most local Web shops design, and it is allowing SEI to capture a market segment with hundreds of potential customers.

The ERGO Insurance Group is decreasing IT costs and accelerating delivery of new solutions by standardizing on Microsoft® Windows® and adopting Microsoft .NET-connected technologies. The new capabilities provided by the Microsoft .NET Framework and Visual Studio® .NET help, ERGO’s IT service organization do more with less by increasing developer productivity and meeting the diverse needs of the Group’s main German insurance companies with a single programming model and tool set. Native support for Web services helps ERGO to build powerful yet flexible solutions that are easily integrated with other internal solutions and with the company’s business partners. ERGO has built several .NET-connected solutions, each delivering greater market reach or the improved use of IT resources.

Transitioning from a completely outsourced Web site, Long & Foster is implementing a Microsoft Internet business solution to improve the quality of data on its site and better manage information. The solution enables cross-selling opportunities, incorporates enhanced features such as personalization and property mapping, and provides a scalable architecture that can keep pace with company growth. The redesigned longandfoster.com will help real estate agents identify customers early in the sales cycle. The site will dynamically target content such as home listings, based on an individual customer’s interest, as well as provide a means to follow up on opportunities to connect customers with agents, relocation services, and mortgage and insurance services.

Transitioning from a completely outsourced Web site, Long & Foster is implementing a Microsoft Internet business solution to improve the quality of data on its site and better manage information. The solution enables cross-selling opportunities, incorporates enhanced features such as personalization and property mapping, and provides a scalable architecture that can keep pace with company growth. The redesigned longandfoster.com will help real estate agents identify customers early in the sales cycle. The site will dynamically target content such as home listings, based on an individual customer’s interest, as well as provide a means to follow up on opportunities to connect customers with agents, relocation services, and mortgage and insurance services.

Built on the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers, the Digex Application Platform gives companies a comprehensive suite of hosted services that deliver excellent performance. Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 provides the reliable, high-performance, scalable infrastructure that Digex needs for advanced monitoring and management of customer Web sites 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Ingram Micro developed the latest version of its IMPipeline business-to-business e commerce storefront using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework. The company estimates that it was able to build and deploy the application in half the time that it would have taken before the move to .NET. Featuring a data management solution built on Microsoft SQL Server 2000, IMPipeline uses XML Web services to make valuable product, customer, and order information readily available to reseller partners in a format that is easy to integrate into their own storefronts. Ingram Micro anticipates continued growth and is confident that Microsoft and .NET offer the best strategy to meet the company’s global expansion requirements and scalability issues.

The Spanish government's "Info XXI" initiative requires all government organizations to provide online public services, including the Ministry of Finance. Faced with old paper-based processes and an outdated Web site, the Ministry acted by deploying Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server as the platform for a new portal and automated business procedures. By using the Server and other Microsoft technologies, the Ministry can now modernize its Web presence, conduct e-procurement, and deliver online information and services to citizens and businesses.

A business-to-business e-commerce application using Microsoft® Commerce Server 2002 and Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2002 let Tyco Valves customers enter their own orders and check the status of their orders over the Internet seven days a week, 24 hours a day.