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You can register to receive regular copies of the Centreline 2000 News Letter.
They always contain a mixture of product news, technical information, trade gossip - some of which you will not
hear anywhere else!
Centreline 2000 - keeping you informed.
This issue:
- Reviewed Local Government on the Web
- Case Study: Exel Logistics and fax
- Centreline and Staffware join forces in Workflow
The UK's first complete review of Local Government Web Sites
The Best and the Worst - on the Web
THIS MONTH WE MAKE NO APOLOGY FOR
CONCENTRATING ON THE FINDINGS OF THE
UK'S FIRST COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY ON HOW
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IS USING THE WORLD
WIDE WEB AND INTERNET.
Conducted by
Centreline during April, the report contains
some real surprises - and important lessons for
anyone planning their own Web site.
Best of the Web
Firstly, congratulations to all the winners and
runners-up identified in the various categories
of the report. A number of organisations
succeeded in providing sites that were
interesting, attractive, well-designed and
informative. Among the councils reviewed
Newcastle upon Tyne and the City and District
of St. Albans both offer high quality Web
publishing and consequently received awards
for best design and most informative content
respectively.
Overall winner was Western Isles Council
(Local Government Web site of the Year), for
their site - publishing in both English and
Gaelic. Well done!
Basic questions
Unfortunately the majority of organisations
failed to understand or exploit the Web and
many have evidently failed to ask themselves
the following basic questions:
Why am I doing this?
It is vital to have a clearly defined set of
objectives for your site. As obvious as this may
sound, only 12% of the sites surveyed for the
report had any clear objective or purpose. Many
seemed to have pulled together detailed lists of
un-related information and indulged in the 90's
equivalent of vanity publishing.
An important implementation detail here is
registration and naming. Since one of the main
objectives of any Web page is to market
products and services, it is essential to register
your site with the appropriate registration
groups. Yet in the case of local government we
found only 41 sites registered with the relevant
bodies (CCTA, etc.) We are aware of at least 100
local government sites and there are just under
600 local government bodies in the UK as a
whole!
Am I committed to the project?
Presentation counts - on the Web as it does on
the printed page.
Yet time and again the report revealed how the
standard of presentation and usability of the site
did its owners a disservice. In part this can be
attributed to a lack of clear objectives (see
above).
But equally, it was obvious that many
organisations had simply failed to quantify the
overall maintenance and management task that
comes with a Web site. 10% of surveyed sites
had published 1 or 2 pages and then ground to a
halt.
All too often we found pages with an "Under
Construction" banner - that had not been
updated for months, together with numerous
dead-end links leading to empty pages.
Do I understand the media?
The content and purpose behind a Web site are
similar to other forms of publishing media -
notably printed matter and advertising.
However, it is a different medium and needs to
be treated as such. A range of tricks and
techniques can be used to use the media to its
best advantage:
- Manage graphics size and formats for best response
- Do not over-use linking capabilities
- Use navigational devices within pages to assist the reader
- Use sitemaps and table of contents to assist the reader
- Provide components that change daily or weekly to encourage repeat visits
- Maximise the impact and usability of the first screen
The Web offers an unparalleled opportunity for
potential customers to interact with the
organisation. This can range from the option to
send electronic mail to the site, through to
providing an on-line visitors book. All of this
needs to be built in to the site development.
How can I make it easy for myself?
Many of the surveyed sites had failed to address
the technical issues around Web publishing.
Advertising agencies and printers are not
necessarily the best people to design and
develop Web sites. There are as many
similarities between Web site development and
computer programming projects.
There are tools available to automate the
creation and management of a site, yet over 90%
of those surveyed had no means of managing
the site in the long-term. In consequence it can
be difficult and time-consuming to maintain and
develop a site. Yet with the right tools a site
developer can:
- Ensure accuracy and validation
- Eliminate hand-coding of Web pages
- Make stylistic changes across all pages in a single action
- Automate daily and weekly changes of information
- Automate link checking and integrity validation
- Automate data and document format conversion
There is a clear distinction between the
authoring of content based Web pages within a
site and the tools required to provide additional
facilities such as forum access, database usage,
search facilities, interaction and feedback. A
successful site is one where the developers have
understood this distinction and viewed the
project in its totality.
Lessons for non Government sites
All the comments above apply to commercial
sites as well. It does not matter whether your
site has a single page or hundreds of pages.
Your objectives must be clear, your
methodology firm, your on-going commitment
is required.
We would expect a commercial web site to cover
the principle objectives:
- Advertising
- Lead Generation
- Customer Service
- Customer Support
- Customer contact and feedback
Having established these objectives you must
work with your web design team to establish
how your site will meet these objectives.
You must also ensure that your site is properly
registered at the UK and worldwide search sites.
How can I get help?
A summary of the report is available on-line at
www.c2000.com. A full copy of the report is
available for 195.00 UKP. The full report and a
complete review of your own web-site is
available for 745.00 UKP.
Full details from Centreline 2000 sales line:
01905 72 40 80.
Case Study: In Search of Excellence
WE EXAMINE HOW EXEL LOGISTICS, BRITAIN'S BIGGEST WAREHOUSING AND DISTRIBUTION
COMPANY, USE COMPUTERISED FAX TO HELP MANAGE THEIR BUSINESS.
Exel Logistics is Britain's biggest warehousing and distribution
company. Owned by the giant NFC, the company moves and
stores more goods than virtually anyone else.
Exel Logistics numbers many of the UK's leading organisations
in its client list and at their Reading depot they run an entire
operation dedicated to serving the needs of one of Britain's
leading brewers - responsible for hundreds of pubs, inns, hotels,
motels, steak and pizza houses.
A major logistical task
As you would expect, the brewing giants demand the very
highest service from their suppliers, as Mike Lewis, Systems
Project Manager at Exel Logistics explains. 'It is our job to
handle the entire supply chain for the customer, from purchasing
through warehousing and distribution to invoicing.'
Ufax - business critical messaging
With a vast operation to manage, including daily communication
with hundreds of suppliers of perishable and non-perishable
foods, Exel Logistics turned to Ufax to automate and manage
purchase ordering on behalf of their customer.
Ufax is the Unix based fax module supplied by Centreline 2000 -
it can use both ASCII terminals and PC Windows clients. Ufax
will run stand-alone or integrates with Uniplex.
Lewis again. 'Everything you ever see in any of the customer's
outlets has been ordered, warehoused and delivered by us -
down to the last lettuce leaf. Its a massive - and time critical
operation - particularly with the perishable foods.'
'Our staff and EDI systems take orders every morning from the
brewers outlets around the country. Every afternoon we generate
hundreds of purchase orders to go to the food suppliers, for
delivery to us the same evening. We receive the goods and the
following morning we deliver to pubs, restaurants and hotels
nation-wide. The supply chain never stops. It runs 7 days a
week, 24 hours a day.'
Exel Logistics have long appreciated the role that IT has to play
in this type of operation. Their UNIX-based dedicated supply
management system Socrates, handles the overall business
process including interfaces into the company's own accounting
systems as well as the brewer's EDI link. But given the
continuing growth in the brewer's operations, the real challenge
has been finding a fax-based solution for communication with
brewer's suppliers.
High throughput
Lewis again, 'when you need to send between 300 and 500
purchase orders by fax every day - some of them over 100
pages long - you want a fax-solution that's utterly robust, reliable
and configurable. That's why we chose Ufax and built it in to our
application.'
The company had originally written its own bespoke software for
sending orders to a single fax-modem (a DCE FaxBox), but there
were limitations. 'with the size of the operation we really needed
more FaxBoxes to avoid potentially costly bottlenecks. That
meant an intelligent system for queuing the fax orders to multiple
FaxBoxes. We could have developed the software in-house but
the decision was taken that rather than re-invent the wheel, we
would seek an off-the-peg solution - providing it could fit our
unique requirements.'
Intelligent fax management
After evaluation, Exel Logistics selected Ufax. Lewis explains,
'we needed a solution that could support multiple fax queues to
several FaxBoxes. It had to offer batching intelligence - so that
multiple orders to the same supplier were automatically spooled
and sent as a single fax message. It had to be able to recover
properly from transmission errors and it had to be a proven
technology. We chose Ufax and the product hasn't let us down
since we rolled the system out in September.'
Overall, Exel Logistics are delighted with the results. 'The
product has solved the problem of ever-increasing volumes of
fax orders. The users of the system can leave the mechanics of
fax management entirely to Ufax. They can check the queues to
verify whether an order has been sent - or when it will go. Ufax
always reports back if a line was busy, or a transmission failed. If
there is a break in transmission on a large (100 page+) order,
the system automatically restarts from the point where the break
occurred.
Scope for growth
Best of all there is plenty of scope for growth. We are currently
issuing up to 500 orders a day using 3 FaxBoxes, but we have
the option to increase to this as necessary. I don't anticipate that
will require any further upheaval and that's important because
this business is growing daily!'
Solution summary:
Site: Exel Logistics depot at Reading
Problem:
To provide a fax-based purchase ordering system
capable of serving one of Britain's largest brewing, hotel and pub
chains. The system must intelligently queue and manage as
many as 500 orders per day as a part of the UNIX-based supply
management system.
Solution:
Integrate Ufax into the supply management system.
Use a number of UNIX-host connected FaxBoxes to send out the
purchase orders. All orders are placed in a central directory
where they are intelligently processed and queued by Ufax.
Centreline 2000 and Staffware join forces
Leading workflow developer Staffware plc and
Centreline 2000 announced a new partnership
agreement this month. The two companies will
now work together to deliver workflow and
groupware solutions.
What is workflow?
Workflow is the automation of tasks within
your organisation. For example, a task may
involve several steps and several people.
Workflow ensures that each person carries out
their task at the right time and the job moves on
to the next person.
What is Staffware
Staffware plc is the market leader in workflow
products. Staffware - the product - comprises
Unix or NT systems supporting both Windows
and ASCII terminals. The software integrates
all your normal desktop applications - you do
not need special software on each users desk.
For more information, contact Sales on 01905
724080.
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