The OrderChannel e-commerce solution from Fioravanti-Redwood International (FRI) is working with the HP e3000 to power eSalt, a new business-to-business application for IMC Salt Inc.

IMC Salt, the third-largest producer of salt in the world, sells a wide range of salt products for industrial, agricultural and food processing uses, as well as road de-icing products. eSalt provides order management and customer service functions for brokers, wholesalers, manufacturers and other corporate customers. FRI said eSalt’s back-end system runs on an HP e3000 Series 979KS/400. The application is built in OrderChannel using Windows NT and SQL Server 7.

“The HP e3000 is very well-suited to e-commerce applications,” said FRI president Mark Redwood. “Many corporate customers think they need to invest in lots of new technology to implement e-commerce, but OrderChannel’s ability to integrate with multiple platforms lets them leverage existing infrastructure.”

IMC Salt president Robert F. Clark said that “Unlike most e-commerce sites, the IMC Salt package provides direct integration with our current system, providing our customers with real-time inventory availability when placing orders. Customer reaction to these electronic benefits from our beta site tests has been extremely positive.”

FRI wanted to create an application that integrated seamlessly with IMC Salt’s existing ERP system, adding secured access to up-to-date order and shipping information. Mel Vos, Director of Customer Service for IMC Salt’s General Trade business, said OrderChannel integrated business systems with existing customer service functions through user-friendly interfaces.

“eSalt gives our customers the features they need to easily place orders, check order status and review order history whenever it suits them,” Vos said. “They will have choices for saving incomplete orders, placing new orders from saved templates and tracking orders online throughout the process.”