Franz Design

7 . eBusiness Facilitates Traditional Routes

Franz Caffrey’s relationship with his retailers has been his bread and butter, therefore it was vital that the web initiative would not compete in any way with the existing retail network. The company went to great lengths to explain the non-competitive nature of the venture to all of their stockists. Franz visited each retail customer and explained that retailers were given their own area on the site to enable domestic Irish shoppers to locate their nearest outlet. Retail prices also remained more competitive, as Caffrey explains, “If someone orders online from within Ireland, they will pay more after the cost of postage and packaging than if they bought locally.” If someone orders online from within Ireland, they will pay more after the cost of postage and packaging than if they bought locally.”

Franz has always strived to provide excellent customer service. He believes his approach sets the company apart from their competitors. The company relies on honest feedback from its retail network to ensure that both the design and distribution of their products is of the highest quality. The biggest problem facing the company is obtaining constructive feedback. “Our customers often don’t want to hurt our feelings and are afraid to speak up when something isn’t quite right”, remarked Franz Caffrey. “We explain that the truth can only serve to improve our company and we realise we are only human and make mistakes. The difference with us is that we learn by our mistakes and endeavour to fix any problems to avoid the same pitfalls in the future.”

8 . Implementation

Working on a tight budget of IRP£10,000, Sentia Technologies ensured that the goals for the site could be achieved within this monetary constraint. When selecting hosting options, Sentia arranged for the site to share space on a high-end server, rather than wasting money on a costly dedicated solution. The selected hosting company, based in Dublin, provides a managed facility with guaranteed availability 24 x 7. Costing under IRP£1,000 per annum, licenses to use web server software is included in the fee. “With a small company the primary focus is often the budget,” remarked Keith O’Loughlin of Sentia Technologies, “larger companies have their goal as the primary aim with budget coming second. For Franz we used an inexpensive but reliable hosting solution, along with saving money on license costs. For instance, the database we used was MySQL – an open source product with negligible license fees.” (See Open Source Sidebar)

Sentia managed the project from start to completion, ensuring that the required functionality was within the terms of budget and timescale. In addition, maintenance charges were kept to a minimum. “The site was designed in order for any changes required to be propagated throughout the site,” explained Keith, “If the logo needs updating for example, it can be changed in one place and the changes will be automatically reflected across the rest of the site”.

If in the future the site needs to be extended, Sentia ensured any additions to features and hosting requirements could be quickly amended. “If Franz decides to scale operations and put 200 instead of 40 products on his site, we can easily add in addition functionality such as search engines and hierarchical catalogues,” remarked Keith. (A hierarchical catalogue is a method of organising items into high level groups and then sub-groups under each high level category).