Sept. 4, 2001
E-Commerce Solution for GW
Colonial Computers Goes Online
By Greg
Licamele
With a few, simple clicks of a computer mouse, the GW community now
can shop at Colonial Computers online and purchase the latest software
and hardware, often times at the educational price.
The Interactive Multimedia Applications Group (IMAG) in conjunction
with Information Systems and Services (ISS), have designed an e-commerce
solution similar to Web sites such as amazon.com or other online shopping
sites.
“Colonial Computers is a University-owned entity,” says Ann
Marie Ready of ISS, who manages Colonial Computers. “We’re
not a Best Buy, we’re not a big profit house. One of our biggest
selling points is service and with the launch of the Web page and the
shopping cart component, we hope to expand better service to GW.”
Bizhan Beiramee, IMAG business development manager, says Colonial Computers
now allows customers to select merchandise from an online shopping cart,
buy it online with a credit card through the payment processor (Bank
of America), and have it delivered to an on-campus or off-campus address.
One of the benefits of this new system, Ready explains, is the ability
to buy merchandise at the educational price. These items are restricted
to GW community members.
“If you do a comparison of some of the educationally-priced software
such as Adobe Acrobat, Colonial Computers is selling it for $59,”
Ready says. “If you go to a Best Buy, its list price is $249, so
the savings is significant.”
Beiramee and Ready see other uses for this shopping cart system. “Now
that we’ve implemented it in one place, we can create similar solutions,”
Beiramee says. “We’re in the process of building a solution
for alumni registration” for dinners and other events. They also
cite needs to order telecommunications services such as voice mail and
perhaps other areas such as parking permits.
Ready says any department with a need to sell something online can work
with ISS and IMAG to use the shopping cart system supported by the safe
transactions through Bank of America.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
