Shares in ERP vendor XKO Group Plc climbed 17.5% to 208 pence after the company revealed details of a new application aimed at users of its wholesale and distribution supply chain software which allows them to trade online. ‘e-KO’ enables customers to fill a shopping basket and pay for it online, with the order details passed back into the Hertfordshire, UK-based firm’s back-end ERP systems. Customers can access the internet to see which stage their order is in the sales pipeline.
Merchants can check that the cash has gone through in real-time, the company claims, through a partnership with Commidea Ltd, a payment processing specialist which has links to the major UK transaction processing banks. The system will run on both Windows NT and all Unix flavors, with the data stored in a SQL Server database.
XKO has 400 customers which will form the initial market for e-KO first phase. It has trialed the e-commerce package with 30 existing customers and says it has taken 22 orders. In its second release, the company promises that e-KO will be integrated with other ERP systems, but it has yet to decide which ones. XKO is also developing its software to allow users to access the ERP data remotely. Systems will cost between 30,000 and 100,000 pounds ($49,600 to $165,000).
