The Client
Higher Nature is dedicated to finding the best natural, non-toxic, nutritional supplements and effective remedies for full health and potential, making real information available, and supplying them to the highest standards and as efficiently as possible.
They provide natural supplements, using materials that have a beneficial and harmonious effect on the body without toxicity and side effects. The herbs and plants used are organic where possible and are freshly dried and powdered. The company avoids genetically modified sources and any other synthetic processes because of the potential hazards to health and ecology.
The Challenge
"We needed an e-commerce website that worked with our existing stock control system which could take advantage of selling on-line without increasing our administration"
Higher Nature previously operated two catalogue websites selling their products to a global audience. This was supported by a stock control system that was used internally by their UK based Call Centres.
The stock control system was their ‘core’ operating system. It held all their customer details; accounts, names, addresses, credit limits and relevant discounts if any.
Because there was no interaction between the websites and the stock control system, any order received from one of their two websites was e-mailed to an office where it was manually input into the stock control system every night or every morning. This lack of interaction meant that neither website knew if it was selling an out of stock product until the information reached the stock control system. If there was a problem with lack of stock, the workload doubled because the customer had to be told via a manually generated e-mail.
Equally, a returning customer couldn’t rely on the system retaining their details because there was no order history held by the individual websites because it was held by the stock control system.
A solution therefore had to be found of making sure all three systems could ‘talk’ to one another and that all stock levels were updated in real time.
What We Did
Higher Nature called upon the services of JIT Consulting who sat down with the Directors, the IT and e-marketing departments. Listening to what they wanted JIT put together a proposal for a fully functional, flexible and integrated system.
After 6-months of development JIT Consulting produced an on-line e-commerce website with a Content Management System (CMS). Now, when you log-on as a returning customer, the system knows who you are. It knows your order history, credit level, and payment details and whether you are eligible for any discounts and because Higher Nature is a global retailer it also knows what the exchange rate is if you’re placing an order from overseas.
A unique feature of the CMS is the ‘search’ facility. The result of a product search gives you a photographic image, the sizes available, a description of the product, a list of the countries where you can buy it, its price and a list of where national restrictions mean that you can’t buy it.
The flexibility of the CMS has also allowed Higher Nature to increase their online presence through e-marketing and through the development of country specific websites all of whom are in their native language. The system also caters for subsidiary companies and franchises – every one of which is directly linked and supported by the stock control system.
Each new website that comes online becomes a graphical interface supported by the core system and because the core system is already in place the individual build cost of each site is lessoned.
The key supplier requirement for Higher Nature was to source a company that would analyse the problem and resolve it with a bespoke solution, not provide them with an off-the-shelf product that would then be adapted to meet the requirement.
As a result of their success, JIT Consulting continues to provide a full and thorough support service.
Each of JIT Consulting’s solutions is bespoke. There is no off-the-shelf product that is tailored to meet a requirement. We work closely with all our clients in order to ANALYSE their problem, provide a SOLUTION, CREATE the product and DEVELOP the system.
Technologies we used
HTML, CSS, Javascript, SOAP
Screenshots
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