CMS to manage products across 50 storefront locations?

[alkatraz]

Before I begin, I've searched and there isn't an easy, succinct way to describe this particular challenge.. which has led me to asking for your help.

We're about to engage with a client who sells about 1700 different products, but they *don't* want to sell online (no e-commerce) and they don't want to have any type of data synchronization on their inventory or anything like that.

However there's one catch, they have 50 different physical locations and not all of the locations stock every product. They don't want to show inventory quantity per location, but they do want to show if the location "carries" or "doesn't carry" each product.

Basically, I'm looking for a CMS or eCommerce system (minus the shopping cart element) that handles product availability across 50 locations.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance

[ChiefLee]

Well the first thing that comes to mind is Magento. Granted it is an e-commerce platform but you could massage it into just an inventory management system. Also I would think basing on an e-commerce platform would be a good idea. That way if in the future the client does decide to sell on-line its an easy jump.

[bluedreamer]

The big question here is, do they require individual locations to be able to manage their own inventory, or is it going to be from one location?

[siterich7]

So they just want to be able to summon up a list per location of what each location carries, i.e., do a search box for any location's data file(s) to see if that location carries a given product.

You could set up a search box on any page(s), anywhere - either on (a) freely-accessible pages, like on page 1029 of owou.com ( http://owou.com/logo77/pv12.php?action=view&Page=1029 ) or on (b) password-accessed pages, like # 761 at http://owou.com (or the like) - where your search box would query their data file(s) to find the listing for any given product in those files.

For example, if you go to http://owou.com , and enter "pizza" into the upper right hand side Get Page # (Search) box, it will bring up a listing of any page(s) where "pizza" is coded into the relevant field on that page. This is just one for instance of how a database could show records of what is handled on the pages. In this case, each item would have its own page, and have its designating term in the relevant search field.

You could also have a click to produce a list of all their pages with the relevant data so you could scan them for the item/page you want.

Rich

[alkatraz]

Hi guys, thank you for your responses.

ChiefLee: Magento is out as the client has been sold on not using open-source due to security concerns. However using a e-commerce system, with the shopping cart removed, that works with a CMS sounds like the way to go.

bluedreamer: Nope, no inventory quantity #'s at all. Their head office will just check a box that says "available at this location" or "not available at this location".

siterich7: interesting idea but not quite what they are looking for.


Update: The client was previously recommend towards Ektron400 CMS. I did a demo of their software the other day and I think it will do the job with the e-commerce plugin added in. I'm an open-source guy at heart so using a $5k ASP.net application is a bit unorthodox for me however it should be a good learning opportunity.

[dev007]

Hi guys, thank you for your responses.

ChiefLee: Magento is out as the client has been sold on not using open-source due to security concerns. However using a e-commerce system, with the shopping cart removed, that works with a CMS sounds like the way to go.

bluedreamer: Nope, no inventory quantity #'s at all. Their head office will just check a box that says "available at this location" or "not available at this location".

siterich7: interesting idea but not quite what they are looking for.


Update: The client was previously recommend towards Ektron400 CMS. I did a demo of their software the other day and I think it will do the job with the e-commerce plugin added in. I'm an open-source guy at heart so using a $5k ASP.net application is a bit unorthodox for me however it should be a good learning opportunity.

Ektron CMS is not a bad CMS I did a demo with that system about 1 1/2 yrs ago not bad then either from what I saw. Even Kentico CMS has a shopping cart included - ASP.NET CMS,

Just wondered did the client personally find something wrong with Magento (a/some bugs or like you said found a security whole, or was this something somebody just put in their mind?)
As an OpenSouce guy too, I thought Magento is one the good Carts out there; stable and with good security?
What say you Magento users?