The Client
A leading manufacturer of power tools
The Challenge
Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation wanted to extend its operations to the Internet in order to strengthen its excellent image, improve customer service, and reduce costs.
They wanted to overcome the time and location constraints of its call center and enable distributors worldwide to do business with the company 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Management wanted to keep its call center staff to a minimum and enable the customer service representatives to focus on value-added services rather than simple order inquiries.
The Haverstick Approach
Our team of experts worked with key individuals from Milwaukee Electric Tool to fully understand its current business and technology objectives, as well as future needs and objectives. We worked together to develop a solution that would leverage the investment already made in both human and technology resources, while providing Milwaukee with technology that conforms to today’s industry standards.
Using IBM’s WebSphere Commerce Suite v5.1, Haverstick Consulting delivered a high-performing, dependable, scalable, and secure e-commerce Extranet Web site that runs on IBM’s eServer iSeries. The B2B site is full-featured, allowing customers to place orders, check order status, view order history, view account information, and browse orders that were placed both online and via other mechanisms, such as EDI. This was achieved by integrating the WCS systems with Milwaukee’s J.D. Edwards ERP, which allows the order and customer information to easily flow between the multiple systems.
Milwaukee Electric Tool has a second public Web site, used primarily as a marketing vehicle that allows consumers to view information about the company’s products. This solution leverages Lotus Domino and the Lotus Notes framework to deliver the Web site’s content to the general public. The catalog information for the public site is obtained from the WCS B2B site. This allows the content management of the catalog to be maintained in one central location via the WebSphere Catalog Manager application.
Since Lotus Notes has served as the company’s internal collaborative platform since 1995, Lotus QuickPlace and Lotus Sametime have recently been added to the existing suite of software components for advanced collaboration.
The Result
By integrating the Web initiatives within the organization, the client has been able to improve business processes while leveraging new technologies. The result has been a 90% reduction in online order-processing costs. This is because the Web self-service features significantly reduced calls to its call center and is also due to the elimination of manual order entry in the J.D. Edwards system. | 
