Custom Catalogs
SHI.COM is based on a catalog of over 250,000 active parts, constantly updated from electronic feeds from our own suppliers to ensure comprehensive, timely information. Your sales team will use our SalesCenter and custom catalog engine to draw on this pool of products to create your own customized catalog, reflecting the products you want to see, at the pricing negotiated. This includes licensing programs and custom parts. Your sales team can make changes to your catalog in minutes, and have the changes take effect instantly.

In addition, SHI offers support for customers who choose to define their own sets of standard products. Our catalog engine allows some products to be designated as corporate standards in order to help customers find common products more rapidly. In addition, our site's custom security system will allow customers to designate some users that can only see those standards, while permitting others to access the full catalog.

Finding Products in the Catalog
Our search tool organizes results using simple, easy to understand tabs, to help you choose hardware product, license, shrink-wrapped software, book, or media. Many catalog listings are accompanied by links to detailed product information such as product features, hardware or software requirements, and more. Other product links provide access to real-time availability, with direct access to inventory at warehouses around the country.

We offer a number of different mechanisms for finding products in the catalog, including:

• Quick Search
  Allows the user to search for products by manufacturer part number, keywords, or web site catalog number.
• Basic Search
  Allows searching the catalog by manufacturer part number, keywords, or web site catalog number; it adds the ability to search for occurrences of any/all keywords, or for a Boolean expression.
• Advanced Search
  Adds the ability to search by manufacturer, product line, product category, or media type, or any combination of the above with keywords or part numbers.
• Browse by Category
  Designed for the user who knows what kind of product they're looking for, rather than the actual name or part number. Allows the user to drill down through the categories of products in their custom catalog, browsing the products in those categories as they go.

Click on Find/Order Products.  You will be prompted to log-on (if you haven't already).  Log-on as "webguest", password "guest".   You will then be able to search a generic catalog set up for demonstration purposes (pricing is not valid). 

Ordering Off-catalog Items
If you can't find the item you're looking for in our catalogs, you can still place an order for it on SHI.COM.  We provide a way to add non-cataloged items to any order.  

Click on Find/Order Products.  You will be prompted to log-on (if you haven't already).  Log-on as "webguest", password "guest". The Add a Special Product online form is accessible from this page.

Shopping Carts
As products are selected, they can be added to a simple, familiar shopping cart. Once an order is complete, the cart can be saved as a saved order for future use, or placed immediately with SHI.  Saved orders are ideal for allowing customers to conveniently place common orders without searching for the products again; such as the standard bundle of hardware and software used to outfit a new employee.

Custom Data Collection on Orders
When an order is placed, SHI can capture additional information beyond the basic shipping and payment information. We can capture fields such as cost center, department number, organization code, approver name, or any other information as requested by the customer.  Data collection can be set up in a matter of minutes by your sales team -and revised just as quickly. Our advanced, data driven architecture empowers our sales teams to do this without intervention by our technical staff; changes take effect instantly.  Custom data collection fields can be included in reporting or electronic information feeds as required.

Quotes
All of the tools we created for our online ordering system can also be used to build quotes. Use your customized catalog to assemble items into a quote, which we'll honor on the web site for 30 days from the time it's saved. When quotes are created on the system, your sales team is notified, so that they can work with you to ensure that you're finding the products you need at the correct pricing.

Workflow
When a quote is created, there is an option to have a copy of it emailed to the creator, or to someone else in the customer organization that can place the order.  The email includes a direct link to the quote on our site. This enables simple workflow; users without the right to place orders can find products, create quotes, and route them to buyers in their purchasing group, all from www.shi.com.

Order and Shipment Tracking
SHI offers an order tracking system that will let you track the package to your door. For many orders, we supply direct links to the shipments at Federal Express, Airborne or UPS web sites.