Basta Parsons

3 . Web History

Manufacturing companies in Ireland run on extremely tight margins. With cheap competition from Asia constantly biting at their heels, Basta approached Enterprise Ireland for assistance. Using the Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Accelerator Fund, Basta were able to secure approval for approximately 40% of the total estimated cost required to get the new web project off the ground. “The site would not have been built without the grant,” remarked Peter, continuing “Manufacturing companies do not have that sort of money to throw around on something that is difficult to quantify.” The company is looking forward to the long-term benefits the site will bring such as efficiencies when dealing with the export markets, improvement in Technical Support, Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) capabilities and an increase in sales. CRM is an information industry term for methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an organisation manage customer relationships in an organised way.



As the aims of the site have always been to provide a more efficient service to its existing and potential customers and expand its customer base, a web site was an obvious starting point. A natural progression was a B2B site. For this, the company selected 6 of its leading suppliers to run with the pilot phase of the project. Recommended by Basta sales personnel, each supplier had to have an adequate level of technical competence. Each one was selected based on the following criteria:

• good stock control system
• email enabled
• browser access or
• web presence

Each partner was consulted to gauge what kind of service they needed from an online ordering system.

Their feedback was to formulate part of the design criteria for the site.



As Basta had no real web design or web implementation skills internally, they sought assistance from an outside organisation. In October 2000 they selected Novavision (www.novavision.com) based in Galway. Novavision had an impressive client list, a good reputation and were very eager to take on the project. (Note: readers can now access Enterprise Ireland’s database of solution providers at www.openup.ie). Both companies sat down together to clarify the specification for the site. Once agreed upon, Novavision set about the design.

Unfortunately, Basta had not yet completed the standardisation of their internal product coding or completed the revision of their product file. “Although we were committed to completing the site, much of the information we needed to collate, required input from several people across our organisation,” warned Peter, “As these staff members were not dedicated resources, they had other priorities. Sparing only a couple of hours whenever they could, resulted in us incurring delays in getting product information”. Compounded by the integration of the Latham acquisition, the project rollout was delayed by some 5 months.

In February 2001 the product file was reviewed and subsequently put in order and the product catalogue could now be transferred to the online system. To avoid lengthy product lists, drop down menus were used to break down product types. “For instance, a handle might come in brass, chrome, black or white, may come with or without a lock and may be packaged in one of several ways,” explained Peter! “To avoid our customers having to scroll down long lists, we would break up the product into type and then they would be able to choose, colour, lock, packaging and number from drop down lists”. As the company has over 1000 products, some with up to 27 variations, this cataloguing process took time.

Integration with the existing manufacturing IT system could now start in earnest. This is the process of bringing data from one system together with that of another. It ensures that the two systems can use common data formats. To do this a file needed to be written which the manufacturing system could understand as each online order was to be completed. Novavision ensured the integration between the
online web store they had custom built and Basta’s manufacturing system in Tubbercurry, was as smooth as possible.

The system was built so that sales information coming from the web site, based at a web farm (see Deployment Section) could update the manufacturing system in Tubbercurry. In order for this to happen automatically, there would have to be a dedicated phone line connecting the two sites. Due to the escalating costs of having such a line, Basta decided to take a batch approach to processing their data. Using this approach, sales information was downloaded from the web site and sent in a batch, to Tubbercurry, once every hour. Basta hopes to upgrade this process once Ireland’s telecommunication companies offer a competitive, dedicated line service.



The site was rolled out in October 2001 and is currently running as a pilot with 96% of the development work completed. With 6 trial customers on board the company aims to be the best in its class offering its online service to hardware merchants and retailers. Its functionality includes:

• online catalogue accessible to anyone, displaying products with no pricing information
• news section
• Technical section – technical specifications and direct email to our engineers for technical support
• sub contractors section for custom made components
• members only section (i.e. only accessible by those, e.g. shops, to whom Basta had given a password)
• full brochure
• pricing
• technical specifications
• shopping cart
• account history
• account status

In 1997 the company only had 4 email addresses, now everyone in the Irish offices has an address using the www.bastaparsons.com domain with Britain coming on line at the end of quarter one 2002.