Major new B2B eCommerce web site launched for AMI
Applied Market Information Ltd (AMI) is a specialist market research and consulting company serving the global chemicals and plastics industries. Established in 1986, AMI is based in Bristol, England and in 2001 established a US operation based in Pennsylvania.
AMI's web site has been rebuilt by Parabola on the uCommerce .NET platform. The new system is content managed via Umbraco and provides a powerful toolset for online marketing and selling of AMI's plastics market consultancy products. The solution is also integrated with AMI's back-office system.
Parabola built AMI's first web site over 11 years ago to promote the global brand and start to sell online. Since then the web and eCommerce has changed considerably as has AMI's business. AMI now boasts a global digital magazine presence in the plastics sector with 4 different bi-monthly publications, a publishing division web site, a conference division web site, a technical books web site and a separate web site for its North America business.
The requirements of the new web site included complete management of all content, more advanced online promotion, and integration with both back-office systems and other web sites. To achieve all this Parabola evaluated a wide range of eCommerce packages and decided on a newcomer to the software market: uCommerce.
The new web site brings the various divisions web sites together under one content management system (Umbraco) and synchronises data with the back-office system. This enables the eCommerce elements to be managed without any duplication of data or effort.
John Horgan, AMI's Operations Director commented; "We have worked on many different projects with the Parabola guys who have always provided a high quality solution which meets our business needs. In this case the challenge set was bigger than anything before and required a complete understanding of our many different systems and technologies as well as an appreciation of eCommerce subtleties."
The site delivers a range of different products and services to AMI's customers. Their range includes products from technical books and marketing databases to high value consulting services. The customer is given a sophisticated interface to access their data and manage their account.