Developping a centralised database for stock and orders

[IMPACT]

1) Order Processing

We have one pc which downloads orders from the Web. Therefore, all customer orders sit on the one pc. This means that only one person in the organisation can process orders and answer live incoming customer queries at any one time.

As Actinic is not a networkable piece of software, has anyone successfully created a custom solution (centralised database for example) that allows more than one Customer Service Rep to have access to orders dynamically, with the ability to to be able to work on the database simultaneously, interrogating (and amending if necessary) the live order processing database?


2) Stock

We want to investigate creating a link between Actinic and our proprietary stock system, such that the site upload pc and order download pcs are linked to a dynamic stock system.

We understand that this would be possible with Actinic Business, linking to an external centralised database and then linking both machines to this db. Has anyone done this themselves?

We are looking for commercial solutions to the two issues.

[Jan]

> 1) Order Processing
We have a product called Quick Orders that can be used on more than one computer - it gives you access to your orders and allows you to ship orders, print order processing reports, enter payment details. More details are available at www.mole-end.biz.

We also have batch order processors that can do similar things to Quick orders but are deisgned to run unattended, when used with our automation products you can collect orders and process them. Using this would enable you to move Actinic onto a PC that is not 'owned' by one person, so that anyone could use it for orders that require more complex order processing.

> 2) Stock
I have several customers that use the external linking feature and it works well. There are some limitations - you cannot link to an Actinic database, some databases will give you a read only link rather than a writable link (SQL server is an example - in some installations it is readonly, in others it is readwrite). What kind of database is your external database?

Regards,