Stone Construction Equipment has significantly revamped its Web site with the goal of helping customers reduce their back-end expenses. “Often manufacturers construct their Web sites and their system architectures to make it easier for themselves to do business,” Stone president Lynne Woodworth told RER. “We wanted to use our operating system to make it easier for our customers.”

Stone developed a shopping cart system that enables customers to order equipment online by choosing between a series of options and thus configuring the particular machine to suit their needs. The customer can also use the shopping cart to order replacement parts and can view service and parts manuals complete with technical drawings and exploding views. The system also allows users to file warranty claims online, thus facilitating fast warranty processing. The customer can also purchase and bid on used equipment, which is updated on a continual basis.

All these offerings are available to the general public (see www.stone-equip.com) allowing anybody to configure Stone equipment and request pricing quotes based on their configurations. Also, anybody can view and download operating manuals, request quotes on parts, file warranty registrations and purchased used equipment. However, Stone dealers and regular customers, by entering a password, will find all of the information pertinent to their account, including their particular unique discount structure, built in to each shopping cart request. Therefore any time a passworded dealer-customer seeks a price or fills in a “shopping cart” type request for a product, its unique discount is automatically figured into the price.

“We'll be adding to the system as we go,” says Woodworth. “We're probably the first in the light equipment segment to use this technology to allow our dealers to reduce their backend costs by ordering online. All of our other telephone services are still in effect and we're not driving people away from that, we're just providing another tool to make doing business with Stone easier. “This is an example of how technology can strengthen partnerships between dealers and manufacturers.”

Stone is also developing a system with a national account customer whereby a branch of that company can requisition and get approval online almost immediately.

Stone developed its system in partnership with Conduit Internet Technologies. More information about Conduit can be found at www.conduit-it.com.

If you have a Web site you would like to see featured in RER, please contact Brandey Smith at brasmith@primediabusiness.com.