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Net Prophet - by Dylan Tweney

March 1, 1999

Low-end I-commerce may be just right for corporate prototypes


Like many IT managers, Ryan Conlon is used to handling urgent, last-minute requests for seemingly impossible projects.

Conlon is a manager of Internet business technologies in the IS department at Progressive, in Mayfield, Ohio, the wholesome midwestern town where Leave It to Beaver was set. Progressive is a provider of automobile insurance, and sponsored the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXIII on Jan. 31.

As part of the sponsorship, Progressive recruited Stevie Wonder, Gloria Estefan, and E.T. (a Progressive mascot, under license from Steven Spielberg) for the halftime show. The company also had a wide array of promotional items made, such as coffee mugs and jackets branded with Progressive and NFL logos, which the company sold to Progressive employees via a printed catalog.

A week and a half before game day in Miami, Conlon got a request from the head of the Progressive business unit responsible for the halftime show: Could Conlon and his staff set up an Internet-commerce site to sell these items in time for the Super Bowl?

Create a working corporate I-commerce site in less than 10 days? Some might consider that an impossible task.

Although Progressive already has an I-commerce site for selling auto insurance online (www.progressive.com), this site -- built largely with Perl CGI scripts running on Sun Sparc systems -- was in no way suited to sell a catalog of Super Bowl tchotchkes. And to integrate the Superbowl catalog into the site would have required far more than a week of coding and testing.

So Conlon took the quick-and-dirty approach: He set up a demonstration catalog using Yahoo Store (store.yahoo.com). Although Yahoo's service is aimed at small to midsize merchants, Conlon found it was the most expedient way to get a commerce site up fast.

"When they tell you that you can have a site live in two hours, they're not kidding," Conlon said.

He was able to set everything up using Web-based forms -- a plus, given that he was going on the road for business and would have to work on the project remotely.

Within a day, Conlon had a demo site ready to show the business folks, complete with Progressive logos, a custom design, and a few sample products for sale.

As it turned out, a week wasn't quite enough time to square away all the details on the business side, so the site never went live. But Conlon was ready to flip the switch and launch the site at a moment's notice.

"It seems like our IS department can now go faster than the business folks -- which hasn't been the case in the past," Conlon told me. That's no fault of the business people; after all, a week isn't much time to set up an online business.

But it is a powerful indication of how technology can lead business, particularly when the IT people understand the business issues at stake and are prepared to act on them quickly.

Conlon's experience also shows that I-commerce solutions often pop up where you least expect them. Sure, Yahoo Store is by no means suitable for a full-blown enterprise site. But for a quick solution to a pressing problem, it proved to be a useful tool.

I suspect that many commerce sites begin in a similar way, with expedient solutions built from whatever is at hand.

How good is your company at responding rapidly to I-commerce challenges? Write to me at dylan@infoworld.com.


Dylan Tweney (dylan@infoworld.com) has been covering the Internet since 1993. He edits InfoWorld's intranet and Internet-commerce product reviews.


Previous columns by Dylan Tweney

FreePC could usher in an era of free stuff and ceaseless advertising
February 22, 1999

Netrepreneur of the Year is a crusader for Web site usability
February 15, 1999

Smart Frog will help get Internet shopping sales really jumping
February 8, 1999

Online service woes dog vendor sites and hinder Internet sales
February 1, 1999


Every column since August, 1997


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