Panasonic 080599

A MitemView Customer Reference
which would integrate with Panasonic’s Home Solution Overview
Page and provide very high speed real timeaccess to the Vision System. Peter Schepis, Industry
a wholly owned operating companyof Matsushita Electric Corporation of Group Manager of MIS commissioned a technol- Jersey. MECA is the North American arm of ogy team to identify and evaluate tools and Application
architecture which could deliver the project Electronic Commerce Application forParts and Accessories Ordering Business Solution
Panasonic, the services sector of the $7.3 Parts and accessory applicationproviding real time pricing, availability Panasonic needed an application which pro- and order entry over the worldwide web.
duced product pricing, availability, substitutions Architecture
and direct purchasing on the internet while allowing real time access to the data residing on Business Problem & Objective
the mainframe. In developing this solution, multiple simultaneous asynchronousnon-blocking sessions to IBM security of their production mainframe applica- Panasonic’s web page, “Panasonic Online,” which operates using Microsoft’s IIS, pub- Products and Services
Technical Objectives
including product promotions, special events, The Panasonic Electronic Commerce Application news, customer support, and product cata- logs. In October 1996, Panasonic Services was had the following technical requirements: Microsoft Front Page, HTML generatorMitemWeb 1.0 given the directive by Panasonic Consumer Electronics to enable consumer purchases of • Support of a high number of simultaneous, products over the Internet by April 1997. A • Support of a multiprocessor server environment significant constraint in designing a web based system was the extensive inventory and • Secure mainframe access using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certification which incorporates Benefits
parts ordering application which resided on an security software from RSA and certificates IBM mainframe. These applications provide inventory information including availability, substitutions, and pricing. Panasonic felt that • Coexistence with IIS and Active Server Pages • Ability to recognize inappropriate host states it was essential to find a technical solution and error messages, and report those via email Panasonic Parts and Accessories Ordering
http://www.pasc.panasonic.com
• Execute as a service under NT 4.0• Design easy-to-use Web pages Panasonic nline
(what’s new ● product catalog ● customer support ● our company) Panasonic
Technics
Business Objectives
Shopping Basket Contents
• Real time access to parts and accessories Part Number
Description
Quantity
Comments
parts & service
• Simple procedures for fulfilling customer orders • Rapid implementation (6 months or less) • Improved customer service through an easy-to • Reduced customer telephone inquiries• Secure credit card environment over the The above packing slip sows the availability for the parts you have ordered. To finalize our order, click on the
Enter Personal Info button.
You may alos adjust the quantities on your order. If you wish to delete a line, enter a blank quantity or a quantity
of 0. Then press the Verify Availability button again to haave the system recheckavailability.
• Enhanced customer exposure to Panasonic’s If you wish to add mroe parts to your order, click on the Select More Parts button.
If you do not wish to place an order at this time, simply leave this page.
Enter Personal Info
Verify Availability
Select More Parts
• Leveraged Panasonic’s huge investment in existing mainframe based order processing, Panasonic
Technics
Technology Evaluation / Selection
Parts & Accessories Ordering Architecture
technologies including Salvo from Simware, Attachmate, and IBM’s Internet Gateway.
Panasonic selected MitemWeb as the technol- Panasonic Online
All requests in the Parts and Accessories Ordering System are initiated by a call from either the Netscape or Microsoft Internet MitemWeb
Explorer browser. All requests pass through the Raptor Firewall to the NT 4.0 Web Server.
sockets on the NT server supporting: HTTP on the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), MitemWeb, and Secure Socket Layer.
enters shipping and credit card information which is passed through MitemWeb using process being used and is controlled by an Active Server Page (ASP) (see figure 2).
consistency with the city and state entered.
The security layer also insures that all credit card information is properly encrypted. All parts & accessories are totaled and one final Online,” the NT 4.0 Oracle Application Server check of the mainframe for quantity available queries a 1.2 million record cross reference file is performed before committing the transac- to return to the browser all parts associated tion. All appropriate sales taxes are calculated based on the city, state and zip and added to Panasonic video CamCorder has 987 parts).
The customer then selects one or more parts verification is processed utilizing a connec- which are added to their electronic shopping tion with First USA. If the credit card is basket. During this interactive process, the accepted, an invoice is produced (HTML) and customer may add or delete any part from the the invoice total including shipping is sent to the browser with an email address and an 800 Customers have the ability to perform a realtime check on availability at any time. To accomplish this, the contents of the shopping center sends a message back to the mainframe basket are passed through the MitemWeb in Secaucus, NJ and a settlement record is For more information
application to determine their status. “This created and batched to First USA. The funds process was critical,” said Larry Mason, are then electronically transferred the follow- Manager, Systems Support Services. “It was or visit our home pagehttp://www.mitem.com important that our customers could checkparts availability immediately rather than to wait until the end of the process. We neededquick and accurate access to the inventory Panasonic, Technics & Quasar customers are now able to purchase parts and accessories 1997 - 1999 MITEM Corporation. All rights determines whether a part is available, has a reserved. This document is for informational new replacement, or is backordered. At that completed this application in such a short purposes only. MITEM CORPORATIONMAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR point, an HTML table is created and passed period of time without using MitemWeb. We back to the browser with final parts informa- MitemServer, MitemWeb are registeredtrademarks of MITEM Corporation. All other tion including substitutions and expected time customers have become aware of the technol- trademarks or registered trademarks are theproperty of their respective owners.
of arrival of backordered parts. Once the part ogy and are taking advantage of it,” said selection process is complete, the customer

Source: http://www.blueiris.md/resources/caseStudies/pdfs/panasonic.pdf