An IT guy who's adept at programming, Bushey has so jazzed up the basic Yahoo! Stores as to make it almost unrecognizable. POS World, or "Point of Sale" World, sells equipment for retail transactions, like bar code scanners and touch screen monitors. As a result, it's no surprise that its owner knows a lot about retail transactions.

And it's Yahoo! retail transaction infrastructure that he has enhanced -- specifically, the data flow of his customers' purchasing processes.

Yahoo! handles the product database, hosting and visitor activity logging. Practically every other process is run using software coded in-house. The add-on software he has written, "basically makes up for all the shortcomings of the Yahoo! product," Bushey says. "I took every conceivable inefficiency in it and streamlined the whole process."

Basic Platform
When Bushey launched his site with Yahoo! Stores back in 1999, it met all his needs. "I found the costs to be really pretty low, it was a good stable platform with a lot of good management features."

At the time, he was still working full-time at his previous job as an IT manager. Time and money were both in short supply, so choosing the Yahoo! platform "was more about how easy was it for me, how quickly I could add a product without having to resize thumbnails, and that kind of stuff."

He looked around and found that "most of the [e-commerce shopping cart] products were fairly complex to get off the ground with, but I had the Yahoo! Stores running with some basic products in an afternoon -- pictures, descriptions ... it was simple."

Have Code, Will Travel
Bushey's business grew like wildfire, zooming to $5.6 million in sales by 2002. He had already begun to write supplemental software for Yahoo!. Then one of his first employees quit, throwing the business into a quandary.

To make up for the manpower deficiency, "I took a holiday weekend and wrote the basics" of the automation system that now routes customer orders, he says. From then on, Bushey has worked constantly to bulk up the basic platform.

For example, he wrote a software package that takes an order feed from Yahoo!, bar codes the data, and standardizes all the information, from the phone numbers to postal abbreviations. The software "determines which [wholesale] vendor to buy from, or if it's going to ship from here," Bushey says.

As he's increased automation, he also believes in keeping a human element. "Coming from an IT background, I'm not a fan of raw data importing. If the customer made an error ... it's not a service to the customer to do a raw data import of their order."

With this in mind, Bushey hasn't automated everything, and instead, assigns his tech staff the task of okaying incoming orders. "Rather than being an automated import, there's an actual technical person looking at the data and the compatibility of products and things like that," he says. "There's still a personal element."

POS World's owner enhanced the Yahoo! Stores engine to speed order processing.

Still, the level automation he has created makes the process cost-effective.

"Whereas most people couldn't afford to have a higher-paid employee handle order processing, because of the bar codes there's no key-punching of any data," he says.

In addition to largely automating the order processing system, Bushey also developed a custom shopping cart system compatible with Yahoo! and "connected to a purchasing system I developed that gets real-time inventory information."

At this point, Bushey has so customized the Yahoo! platform he's considering switching to a completely new platform. He's considering the iCode software, he says.

Either way, though, for Bushey, e-commerce success will still be about effective and efficient data flow. "The key part of how we've managed to grow has been through the development of systems."

Vital Statistics
Name:	POS World.com
Founded:	1999
Sales/revenues:	$8.7M (2003)
Content management/storefront system:	Yahoo! Stores
Database backend:	Yahoo! Stores (MySQL and SQL Server 2000 for add-on systems -- returns management, back order tracking, lead management, helpdesk, knowledgebase, etc.
Visitor analytics system:	Yahoo! Stores, Conversion Analyst
Hosting provider:	Yahoo! Stores and OLM.NET/internal servers for additional services.
Payment solutions:	Yahoo!-approved First Data Merchant Services-compatible provider
Key strategies:	• Build custom apps to speed order processing and eliminate inefficiencies • Avoid over-automation; a human element can better service clients • Find an expandable platform

James Maguire is a contributor to eCommerce-Guide.com. His column appears every Friday.

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