Pacific Solutions uses an off the shelf store management program which they cannot modify. The data is all stored in a legacy Microsoft Access database; as with many off the shelf programs, it had obviously evolved over the years and had a lot of odd twists and turns in the data structure.
Once our programmers had mapped the data to the web database structure, they created a Windows service to regularly update the web with changes to the shop management software. This means that when Pacific Solutions receives a new product, it automatically is published to the website, meaning there is no extra maintenance for the company to sell products online.
Of course, there were some things they wanted to be able to do that they couldn't with their existing software. The programmers created a tool to let them pre-configure parts which go into a computer system: does that processor come with a fan? No? Okay, now you can bundle it, and the customer doesn't get surprised when they can't build an impossible system.
The rest of the project was a simple matter of hooking up our online store technology, credit card processing and the automatic UPS pricing tool, showing that "ecommerce" is just one piece to the online puzzle.
