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RICHMOND, VA. - Weidmuller's warehouse on the outskirts of Richmond is packed neatly to the ceiling with row after row of the manufacturer's terminal-block connectors, wiring gadgetry that goes into everything from washing machines to industrial-control equipment.
Last month, Weidmuller went live with a business-tobusiness e-commerce Web site that is changing how its wiring products get sold and shipped.
Before the e-commerce era arrived at Weidmuller, customer service representatives were back and forth on the phone with dozens of distributors, checking on shipment dates or the availability of parts. Sorting through faxed purchase orders, the sales representatives had to input purchase data into Weidmuller's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
The old style of customer management is giving way to Web-based commerce that lets Weidmuller's distributors buy from an online catalog listing the 10,000 electronic parts the firm sells in the U.S.The catalog is housed in an Oracle database that can be accessed over the Web and searched with the Saqqara StepSearch search engine.
Weidmuller's distributors can now tally purchases online based on prenegotiated, customer-specific prices. And distributors no longer have to call customer service representatives to check the shipping sta tus of orders - that information is now available on the Web.
With its global headquarters in Detmold, Germany, and its U.S. office and warehouse in V-gin&, Weidmuller generates about $550 million per year in revenue, one-sixth of it originating in the U.S.
Weidmuller competes against firms including Allan-Bradley, The Rockwell Group and Wage. Many of these firms have had Webbased...