Norton Abrasives  

Background

Norton Abrasives is a manufacturer of abrasives with several industry-specialty divisions based worldwide.

Problems / Objectives

• To take advantage of the new online sales channel, the Internet.
• To insure that the current sales channels (mostly distributors) did not get upset because Norton was selling their products direct to end-users.
• Provide in-depth technical information to their end users.
• Reduce the cost of product catalog maintenance.
• To consolidate and standardize their product information across all of the Norton divisions.

Salient Software Strategy

• Creation of a standard online product catalog database that included technical specifications as well as price and inventory information. This catalog was to be used across all divisions, however, note that the front end appearance was different for each division.
• Create a unique method for order processing that would first attempt to place each order with a Norton distributor local to the end-user. If the distributor was unable to fill 100% of the order, then the order would be filled directly by the Norton factory.