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Banta
Global Turnkey
4 . Decision
The decision to progress with the iView system was taken in mid
2000. The eBusiness Acceleration Fund provided grant aid for this
project. Although BGT didn’t fit the normal requirements for
a grant of this type, it was felt that the system it was planning
to develop and the process used would provide solid lessons for
other companies looking to run similar projects.
The Options
There were two main ways in which BGT could have provided the proposed
service to its clients:
-
A combination of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) over a VAN
(Value Added Network) – expensive technology to implement
and an expensive way to communicate given the volume of data
that would be transferred around the system.
- The
World Wide Web.
BGT opted to build a web-based system that would allow customers
to interrogate the data held in its databases and pull down the
information relevant to them on an ‘as-needed’ basis.
The main drivers behind the web-based approach were:
- Shareability
– The web is the perfect way to share data
as a large proportion of BGT’s clients would
have access to a web browser. It also meant that
only one way of presenting data was required as
all parties would access the data in the same format
(albeit seeing different data).
- Low
cost of entry – When BGT considered the amount
of data being transferred, the cost of using EDI
and VANs (infrastructure that has been favoured
by organisations in the past) would have been very
high. When using the web, huge volumes of data aren’t
moved around – only the data requested by the
user need be transferred.
-
Ease of implementation – The web wasn’t
very complicated to set up – it was a relatively
inexpensive and efficient way to communicate with
customers.
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