'myLincolnElectric' portal goes live

Lincoln Electric, the $1 billion turnover manufacturer of welding products, robotic welding systems and plasma cutting equipment, has gone live this week with its new Internet portal, ‘myLincolnElectric.com’. This means the company’s trading partners and US distributors can now locate products quickly and easily via the website’s online, searchable catalogue. The content management and e-catalogue part of the portal is being provided by SAQQARA, with its CommerceSuite product. This is tightly integrated with Click Commerce’s e-commerce infrastructure for single-user logon and personalised catalogue content. The portal replaces Lincoln’s previous website content - static web pages with no automated update of product content. Each update of this content required web programming skills, but this cost has now been eliminated with CommerceSuite. “SAQQARA delivered on time and met our programme objectives,” explains Charles Mehlman, Lincoln Electric’s chief information officer. “Our distribution channels are now enabled with the timely product information needed to drive their purchase decisions.” Although not quite there yet, the next phase of the portal project will see real time, automated product content exchange with distributors, SAP integration for instant online product pricing and availability, and guided product and cross-selling.