We can provide your business with a full range of IT Services

• Build and service any system or network your business requires
• Pro-active maintenance, eliminating potential problems before they disprupt your business.
• E-business expertise including web-site development
• Installation/development, training, and maintenance for off-the-shelf and custom software
• Security for your system and data; peace of mind for you
• Custom database and spreadsheet applications
• Reduce your clutter with "paperless" office solutions

"PCG built our network from scratch five years ago and has maintained it ever since. We can always count on them. They are honest, fair, and on-time. They provide the most outstanding service I have ever received from a computer company. Our network is available and dependable."

Cynthia Gleason, Co-Owner Clarke Kent Plumbing

Let our expert staff provide your IT services so that your staff can focus on your customers.

• Thirty one percent of system outages result from power failures
• Surge suppresser power cords are not adequate protection
• Hackers can easily access systems using DSL or cable modems unless properly protected
• Viruses are accessing vulnerabilities in a wider range of system software
• Out-of-date or improperly configured security software, such as anti-virus software, leaves systems vulnerable.
• Spyware is infecting computers from web browsing and email
• Unwanted spam email is clogging mailboxes

Avoid unnecessary downtime. Call or email us for your security audit today.

eCommerce is one of the hottest topics in business today. It may be very beneficial for you to get on-board. But it can be tough to separate fact from fiction, substance from hype. What is eCommerce and how can you make it work for you? Over time you will find a series of articles explaining the various facets of eCommerce that should be important to you. We will give you our opinions, unbiased by influence from any particular vendor.

You will find that most eCommerce companies view the world as Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Customer (B2C). B2B, one business selling to another, has all of the features of B2C along with a host of additional features. B2B can extend B2C to include such things as contract pricing, different payment options, and more complicated shipping options.

Web Store Fronts
This is the topic that gets the most attention today. Many people feel that a web store is all that is really necessary to have eCommerce. While it is a certainly an important part, there is much more to reaping the full benefits of eCommerce.

A well-designed web store is certainly central to attracting prospects and customers. Similar to a "bricks and mortar" store, your web store should provide a pleasing shopping experience, assist your customer in finding their desired merchandise, allow them to "bump into" other products that they might impulsively buy, and then conveniently pay for their purchases.

Key Components

• A pleasing User Interface for your customer,
• A Catalog of products and services with a search capability,
• Contact information for customer service departments within your company,
• Ordering capabilities,
• Payment capabilities, usually with credit cards for B2C - invoicing for B2B, on a secure page,

  Optionally:

• Customer registration,
• Tracking customer preferences,
• Newsletters and updates,
• Shopping lists (especially for B2B),
• Customer and account information.

What is often Missing?
Many eCommerce sites neglect to include some very important features, such as:

• Help desk for product and problem assistance,
• Other forms of Customer Support such as returns and warranty assistance,
• Ability to Talk to a Real, Live Human,
• Referral programs with other web stores offering a commission for referrals that lead directly to a sale.

Back-end Fulfillment
This is a less well known, but equally important part of an overall eCommerce implementation. As the name implies, this part deals with the logistics of confirming and fulfilling orders.

Key Components

• Inventory Management - an interface to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system
• Forecasting - Demand and inventory
• Availability to Promise (ATP) - Do you have sufficient resources to commit a delivery date?
• Supply Chain Management - inventory management, intelligent restocking from your vendors,
• Collection of Funds - bill the customer,
• Shipping - flexiibility in shipping addresses, number of shipments,
• Account information - payments made and balance due.

What is often Missing?

• Exchange of electronic invoices, advanced shipping notices, etc. (EDI, primarily for B2B)

EDI
Electronic Document Interchange (EDI) is the oldest form of eCommerce. Many billions of dollars have been exchanged through EDI. Standards for documents such as invoices, bills of lading, and payments have been defined. Businesses exchange these documents, automating many of their processes, increasing productivity, and eliminating error prone data entry.

Key Components

• Adherence to Standards - There are a number of different levels of standards adherence. It is important that your EDI products can talk to your Trading Partners' EDI products.
• Participation by your Business Partners - Do you have enough electronic trading partners to justify the expense of implementing EDI?
• Changing your Business Practices - Your business practices will change as a result of implementing EDI. That is an unexpected cost encountered by most business.
• Training your Employees - Employees will need to be trained on the new products and the new way of conducting business.
• VAN vs in-house networks - Do you wish to build your own network or subscribe to a value added network (VAN)?

Common Issues
Regardless of the type of eCommerce implementation, there are a number of common issues that need to be addressed:

• Security - Can transactions be performed securely? Is your customer information held securely?
• Scalability - As your customer and supplier bases grow, can your eCommerce solution still handle the traffic?
• Reliability - Are your systems available when they are supposed to be?

What are the Best Products to Fulfill your Needs?
This is always the most difficult issue. How do you get what you need without paying too much?

Frameworks for eCommerce
In the B2B world, there are several frameworks that attempt to organize eCommerce: Open Buying on the Internet (OBI), eCo, commerce XML (cXML - eXtensible Markup Language), RosettaNet, and BizTalk. Each framework seeks to complement existing electronic data interchange (EDI) standards, not replace them. XML is rapidly becoming an important and integral technology of all aspects of the products that comprise a complete commerce application. XML usefulness is enhanced with appropriate document type definitions (DTD), style sheets defined using the extensible style sheet language (XSL), and links defined with the extensible link language (XLL).

OBI is useful for high volume, low value B2B transactions. The standard emphasizes robustness to support many users reliably and securely. Security is an integral part of the standard. Benefits include simplicity and customizable catalogs.

eCo is provided a consortium backed primarily by Commerce One, an eCommerce vendor. eCo has six layers that provide for queries, communication, and information retrieval. XML documents are used to define important information. Benefits include: extensibility, compliance rules, and structure to ease interoperability between various clients.

RosettaNet is also provided by a consortium. It is an XML based standard for supply chain management in the electronic component and information technology industries. Benefits include: particularly strong on purchase orders and inventory requests, and agent protocols.

cXML is a joint effort headed by Ariba, another eCommerce vendor. Its focus is catalog content and transaction information exchanged between partners. Benefits include: simplicity, built-in security, and focus on maintenance, repair, and operating services (MRO).

BizTalk is from Microsoft. It uses Biztags to ease the migration by existing systems to XML. Benefits include: ease of migration by legacy systems and schema versioning.

Mobile Commerce (mCommerce)
Wireless access and mobile commerce (mCommerce) will grow rapidly in the next several years. The rate of growth will be greater in Europe than in the US as Europe has adopted required standards more quickly.

In order to be successful, an mCommerce implementation must have useful applications, appropriate wireless infrastructure, middleware, and network infrastructure.