CCP 09-18-2000 - Laserfiche WebLink

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. . . C-'2-/i).., areas. Some are specialized to locating people, similar to online telephone books, while others provide information about addresses and maps. . Soon after the WWWbecame popular businesses and governments saw the benefit of using web sites in the course of their business. Early sites were primarily informational and many were no more than online brochures. But as businesses and governments became more sophieated, they stal1ed to develop web sites that integrated into their core business practices. Customer and sales support web sites are very useful. They Cllt the cost of doing business while at the same time they provide information to the customer or constituent in useable format when the consumer wants it. The productivity increases and reduced eosts of online business to business and business to customer transaetions have helped many businesses stay competitive and responsive during recent times of skilled manpower shortages. Customer Service is a popular application for a Web site. Many sites include Frequently Asked Questions (F AQ's) so that customers can get assistance for the most common questions and problems 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without the need for an operator or customer support person to be standing by. If the customer's question or problem is beyond the scope of the FAQ, a simple, easy-to-use web based form can help frame the customer's question or problem into a standard format for submission. The form output can be routed automatically based upon keywords selected by the customer, thus saving time and handling costs. Many government web sites include commonly requested schedules, doeuments and forms on their web sites. This allows their viewers to obtain these documents anytime of day or night. In addition, it pushes the printing cost onto the viewer. The eost of supplying a document or form via the WWW is the same for the web site owner whether it is provided 10 times, or ten thousand times. Web sites, such as the IRS or the Minnesota Depal1ment of Revenue, distribute millions of eopies of sehedules and forms over the WWW, saving millions of dollars in printing costs. . Clearly, the use of a World Wide Web site ean save time and money, while providing for faster, better service to an organization's customers or constituents. But, like so many other things, a web site has to exist to realize these benefits. .