Distribution, Manufacturing, and Internet Modules

[DFeller]

This is one thread I'd really like to see a response from Sage on.  EBM hasn't been worked on by Sage, other than converting the files to the business framework, in a long time.  What new functionality will be added?

Dawn

[morps]

Yup, you're right. There really hasn't been too much attention in this area in some time. When the current offering was released, it provided a great way to get your shopping cart out on the web pretty painlessly. That's still true, but shopping on the web is certainly a different beast today and a lot has changed since eBusiness was first delivered. Thing like search engine optimization, PayPal, Google Checkout, etc. etc are just a few of the (many) things we too would like to fix.

That said, we do have a project going on right now to freshen up this area of our offering. We don't have a current ETA (yet) on when we plan to roll it into the product, but your timing is great -- I literally was in a meeting about this today. If you would like to help us refine what we're intending to do, please don't hesitate to email me offline (mike dot morper at sage dot com) and I will have one of my product managers get in touch with you -- more feedback is always better.

Thanks for your inquiry and support,

Mike Morper

Senior Director, Product Management

Message Edited by morps on 11-03-2008 03:55 PM

[SPyle]

JR, I agree completely. I've spent almost 2 years trying to adequately catalog our 50K of products and have effectively SEO'd about 30.  Nothing on the rest of the store.  I'm starting to evaluate alternatives that claim to be searchable to the product level.

Even a task as simple as adding to the category tree takes 2-1/2 minutes to open, and crashes the site when it has to be done.  Each addition of a single item is another 2-1/2 minutes!  We're relegated to managing this process through DFDM and Vi rather than direct edit. 

Integration of HTML into the store is also problematic as we cannot have any hard carriage returns in the code.  For some reason, each CR is treated as a leading <br /> and places my selection tables about 3X below the fold.  (This is also a problem with Business Alerts - making editing very time consuming.)

We are wondering if we are now throwing good money and time after bad.  Anything from Sage in terms of a major enhancement will probably be 3 or 4 years out.

[mas90guru]

I recommend using the new forums as a launching board to make contacts with other eBusiness users and sharing resources and ideas about stretching the current product.

I have a hard time imagining a re-write happening. My gut says there will be more In-Synch type functionality so that data is accessible for reading/writing from third party shopping cart solutions.

[morps]

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mas90guru wrote:
I have a hard time imagining a re-write happening. My gut says there will be more In-Synch type functionality so that data is accessible for reading/writing from third party shopping cart solutions.

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I think we (Sage) need to do a better job providing richer APIs so that best of breed solutions such as third party shopping carts can better integrate. While we will continue to offer a baseline offering, those that want "belt and suspenders" solutions can do so as well. Thoughts?

[RobWaite]

In terms of APIs a DLL that can be referenced in Visual Studio that provides a little intelisence would be a god send.

[DFeller]

I would agree that the MAS shopping cart is a good little cart for the very basic user who wants to get up and running quickly.  I have customers who have been using it for years and are happy with it.  They don't need or expect anything other than the basic functionality.

Then there are those that want lots of functionality.  The MAS EBM doesn't work for them.

It would still be nice if the MAS cart had some minor tweaks, however.  Here are some I can think of off the top of my head:

- Ship to addresses are mailed to the admin to setup, why?  Why can't someone enter in a ship to address to be used for the order just like you can in S/O entry?

- You can't have the same line in the cart more than once.

- Too many things are hard-coded into the tokens.  This makes editing the HTML difficult in some cases.

I'm sure there are many other items if I really sat down and thought about it.

Dawn

[JRobinsonVLS]

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morps wrote:

I think we (Sage) need to do a better job providing richer APIs so that best of breed solutions such as third party shopping carts can better integrate. While we will continue to offer a baseline offering, those that want "belt and suspenders" solutions can do so as well. Thoughts?

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Mike you're aware of my issues with EBM, but the bottom line of ANY baseline offering must be able to be indexed by search engines. The current module's complete lack of adherance to today's SEO standards are its single biggest problem.

I've got several thousand products on our site, and if Sage can address SEO issues, I have no reason or need to look to a third party solution.

General perception here is that EBM was written by someone who knew MAS and ProvideX really well, but only had a fraction of the understanding needed for coding standards on the web. (edit: To be fair, my counterpart has pointed out to me that most if not all of the coding standards in use today didn't exist when EBM was coded, but he also admitted it's been several years that many of these standards have been in place.)

Perhaps the best solution for Sage is to engage a partner who is versed in webdesign and in particular, SEO. I would be happy to pay a Sage Authorized Partner who can take my EBM site and optimize it so someone can type a product into Google and have my site appear if Sage isn't able or willing to commit to the overhaul to fix this problem.

Message Edited by JRobinsonVLS on 11-05-2008 11:39 AM

[DFeller]

I would second the need for SEO optimization on EBM.

Dawn

[SPyle]

Rob,

Something I'm considering at the moment is to duplicate my EBM site on thomasnet.  I can get into the program at the lowest setup level, and then replicate most of ebm on thomasnet with data export/import, thus avoiding the higher setup fees.  They claim very high SEO performance and replicate your  thomasnet store with automatically generated static html.  This might become a duplication of data entry and I haven't determined if we can repoint some of the traffic back into ebm, but it will be another "salesman" on the street.  Thomasnet is more of a B-to-B than consumer sales outlet so it might not be the best fit for you.

Another option is an access routine to generate html.  But we don't want to just create a lot of link-spam. That can be counted against us.