ORDERTRUST IDENTIFIES KEY SUCCESS FACTORS
FOR ONLINE MERCHANTS LEADING UP TO THE
1999 HOLIDAY SHOPPING SEASON

LOWELL, Mass., August 25, 1999 – OrderTrust, provider of integrated order management services for e-commerce, today identified four success factors for online merchants to consider leading into the 1999 holiday shopping season: broad selection of merchandise; hassle-free order management; flawless exception handling; and accurate order fulfillment and delivery. These findings are based upon extensive experience and dialogue with merchants, technology and integration partners, and the over 550 fulfillers, suppliers, manufacturers and drop-shippers connected to the OrderTrust network.

"Customer expectations continue to grow as more and more companies offer merchandise and services online," said Jim Daniell, CEO of OrderTrust. "Not only do consumers demand a broad selection of merchandise, but they also want hassle-free ordering and fulfillment. Online consumers want to easily make changes to their orders or talk to someone who can intelligently discuss order status. These expectations are not unreasonable; however, management of this process and the associated logistics can become a nightmare for online retailers. OrderTrust is helping merchants solve these problems and build profitable relationships with their customers by tightly integrating all the players involved in the e-commerce back-end."

Online Merchants Must Address Four Key Factors to Excel at Online Order Management

As the number of online consumers continues to grow, success will come to those merchants who can not only drive traffic to an easily navigable content-rich commerce site, but can also sufficiently manage the complexity of processing orders placed on those sites. By leveraging the established connections that OrderTrust has with leading suppliers, fulfillers and other commerce partners, online merchants are able to provide their consumers with more efficient order processing and fulfillment, and more responsive customer service. The ability to provide superior service throughout the order lifecycle helps merchants to boost customer retention rates, which in turn, helps drive profitability. As merchants prepare for the 1999 holiday shopping season, they must invest time, technology and resources to address four key components for successful and profitable e-business:

• Increase Product Selection – Consumer demand for a broader selection of merchandise continues to drive online merchants to expand the number of Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) on their sites. In fact, OrderTrust believes that many sites will have trouble launching due to a lack of SKUs. Also, it is expected that merchants plan to increase their product offerings as much as tenfold this holiday season. However, adding and removing products is no easy task. In order to accommodate consumer demand, merchants will need to be able to identify and contract with additional SKU suppliers and quickly integrate those vendors into their order fulfillment process.
• Hassle-Free Order Management -- While the consumers’ view of e-commerce may end once they have hit the "buy button," the reality is that the order lifecycle is a complex process involving many players. Depending upon the fulfillment model employed by a given merchant, a single order may include five different products from five different suppliers. Therefore, it is critical for online merchants to be able to parse the order by line item, translate each line item to the appropriate data format and direct each line item to the appropriate point of supply. Typical steps involved in the overall order lifecycle include checking real time credit card authorization, access to real-time inventory information, order routing, status updates from suppliers, and customer service related functions.
• Order Exception Handling – Findings indicate that while an average of five to ten percent of orders has some exception condition, such as order modification, return, cancellation, fulfillment, back order or shipping error, etc., as much as 50 percent of a merchant’s operating costs can be attributed to handling these exceptions. Therefore, it is imperative for the online merchant to have the tools and infrastructure in place to handle exceptions quickly and efficiently thereby keeping operational costs under control.
• Accurate Fulfillment and On-time Delivery -- When a merchant mishandles an order because of a lack of tightly integrated back-end order processes, it becomes a costly mistake that goes beyond the potential loss of that one order. Studies indicate that if a company mishandles an average order of $80 with approximately a ten percent margin, a company must sell between $4,000 and $5,000 of merchandise to make up for that initial mistake. The online merchant loses the money spent to acquire the online customer and to research and resolve his/her problem, as well as the acquisition costs of the average of ten potential customers informed of the negative experience via word-of-mouth. Therefore, it is crucial that online merchants have in place a reliable back-end order management infrastructure, which integrates order information from all back-end commerce participants so that consumers receive the correct merchandise at the right place at the right time.

The OrderTrust network enables online merchants to successfully overcome the challenges of the e-commerce back-end. OrderTrust provides companies with order management expertise and delivers a tightly integrated solution, which connects a merchant and its multiple third-party commerce partners to its sophisticated network. With OrderTrust managing the order lifecycle, online merchants can focus their resources on increasing brand awareness and driving online consumers to their Web sites.

OrderTrust continues to expand its services to not only manage the complexities of online order management, but also to enhance the online shopping experience, improve customer service capabilities, and ease the flow of information for financial settlement. Leveraging its experience and expertise in the e-commerce back-end, OrderTrust is driving the development of multidimensional services that better integrate customer service and link the end-to-end supply chain more effectively. This will enable merchants to utilize the capabilities of the OrderTrust network to attract new customers, provide vastly superior customer service, and build ongoing consumer loyalty. These services will benefit existing merchants who want to extend their retail or catalog business through the online channel, as well as dot.coms and portals engaging in e-commerce.

About OrderTrust

Privately held and based in Lowell, Mass., OrderTrust provides integrated order management services for e-commerce. Through its fully redundant, 24x7x365 network operations center, OrderTrust securely and reliably manages information throughout the lifecycle of an order, ensuring 100 percent monitoring and auditing of all transactions. Services include order capture, routing of separate fulfillment requests to multiple suppliers, credit card authorization and appropriate merchant compensation, and e-mail notification of order status to consumers. Taking advantage of the OrderTrust network, which has established connections to over 550 trading partners, including fulfillers, suppliers, drop shippers and manufacturers, merchants can focus on the front-end e-commerce initiatives, such as building brand identity and driving traffic to their sites as well as providing superior customer service to their customers. For more information, visit our Web site at www.ordertrust.net.

Editor’s Note: OrderTrust is a trademark of OrderTrust LLC. All other names and trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.

Contacts:

Carrie Marino
Lois Paul & Partners
(781) 238-5732
[email protected]

Margie Ferro
OrderTrust LLC
(978) 551-5077
[email protected]