Natural Solutions: Enterprise Ready, Adds Six Users

Natural Solutions, vendors of the Natural Order, Natural Web, and Natural Retail solutions for multi-channel direct commerce, has achieved a new level of enterprise readiness with the appointment of Richard Carter as Vice President of Development. Carter, who was with Sigma-Micro Corp. for twenty-six years, where he worked as a developer and programmer on the GAP, Lands' End, and East Bay accounts, brings industry expertise in working with large user organizations. He will be working at Natural Solutions to realize a more mature, more fully integrated application.

More than 200 users in the US, Canada, and Australia currently use Natural Order.

With Version 8.0, released earlier this year, the system now offers:
* Internationalization for addressing and currency
* Expanded security definitions
* User-definable order entry setup schemes
* Assortment kits
* Gift recipient lists
* Expanded picking selection criteria
* Email schemes
* Additional 3rd-party interfaces

"We are very excited about the release of Natural Order 8.0, which allows us to provide much more flexibility and functionality within our suite of software offerings," says Tyce McIntosh, VP of Marketing. "We will be implementing version 8.0 for six new users by the end of the year."

Three points in the above list invite comment. The first is the use of "schemes" in Natural Order. These user-definable template interfaces supporting parameterization of system functionality will become the norm in future development on the system. In order entry, for example, schemes specify the order of field navigation, what fields are called, and rules for using each field. You can also designate different sets of fields by user log-on, so that you can have specialized fields for new users and fewer fields for advanced users.

In addition to e-mailing, schemes currently manage royalties and advanced discounting options.

The second point is internationalization. Natural Solutions joins a select group of software vendors who can support virtually any currency and contact (phone, address) conventions worldwide.

Finally, with regard to third-party interfaces, Natural Solutions recently announced integration with Independent Solutions, a provider of sales tax software. This is in addition to integration with POSitive Technology's POS solution (using Microsoft's Retail Management System), the Satori worldwide address verification solution, and Commerce V3 for Web storefronts.

Natural Solutions will start migrating all users onto the same platform in the near future. Says Tyce, "Our latest version is stable and mature. We have an aggressive R&D schedule to continue to extend its functionality, and we're looking at partnerships with additional Ecommerce vendors."