electronic parts catalogues

[gonat]

Would anybody tell me how important it is for you to have the latest technology for the electronic parts catalogues?

In other words, is it something you HAVE TO HAVE and could it be Internet based? Does the application have high impact on your final customer?

Thanks for your response

[This message has been edited by gonat (edited 05-23-2003).]

[Richard]

Is it something you HAVE to have? Yes. Do you need the latest technology, yes, and no. Let me qualify that by saying you need the latest technology in your server, and in your networking, but as far as the counter PC's you can be a little behind there, but not too far behind. I could not recommend anything older than 2 yrs, or below a Pentium 3 or AMD equivilant. ALSO, Important to remember here, MS has stopped support for Win 95, and 98 as of May 1st. I would say Win ME will lose support later in the year, so if you're not running Win 2000, or XP, you better upgrade before then. OH, and W2000, and XP won't run on anything slower than a 700mHz machine dependablily.

As for internet based Parts Catalogs, I'll pass....maybe someday, but unless you have a rock-steady T1 or better, no way.....keep it in-house where you control it.

[scotstrong]

I guess the bottom line answer to your first question is in the form of a question: How important is it to you and your customers to be able to research the correct part number on the first try? Nearly all manufacturers have gone to at LEAST the current technology of electronic parts catalogs (cheaper to produce and large amounts of info can be stored in small amount of space). Some manufacturers have competely eliminated the paper catalogs. Daimler-Chrysler already has internet-based parts catalogs (StarParts). Other manufacturers have theirs under development as this is the direction that technology is headed.

This definitely has the potential to have a high impact on the final customer, as any customer is going to be frustrated and grade their experience negatively if we do not have available the tools to obtain accurate information.

I am at a little bit of a loss to understand the motivation behind this post. Why would you want to let your competitors have such an advantage over you by refusing to graduate to what is by now pretty much a MINIMUM standard of being able to business??

[johnnyo]

mmmmmmmm ...... DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU CONSIDER IT IS YOU ARE SELLING.

[byoung]

gonat,

We are a multi line new car dealership, and two of our four lines are internet based. The other two are pc based. We are doing away with Bell and Howell (PRO QUEST).
Yes, the internet is much faster, and also is updated on a daily or weekly basis, so you don't have to wait for updates, which improves the accuracy. The pc based, have cd's which are sent out monthly

Both are far superior to Micro Fiche and also hard copies.

It is faster, and the final impact is that your customers receive the latest and greatest as far as technology.

Not all manufacturers are internet based, but it is just a matter of time until they are.

byoung