Korean Association of Bookstores adopts Interstage Shunsaku for their book search system.

Korean Association of Bookstores adopts Interstage Shunsaku for their book search system.

The new Interstage Shunsaku-based book search system achieved 5-times faster search time throughout 22 online bookstores and was implemented within 2 weeks

The Korean Association of Bookstores (Hanseohyup)

The Korean Association of Bookstores a consortium of 22 major bookstores in Korea, setup central operations to support their franchised bookstores. The office is responsible for coordinating logistics, ensuring system integration and facilitating systematic operation of franchised bookstores. A scalable business model and integration of offline and online business resources allow the consortium to aim for doubling the number of franchised stores to 50 while continuously providing a uniform product line throughout the stores.

Forced to Strive for Better Customer Service

Online bookstores have gained competitive advantage by selling their merchandise at 20% to 40% off the price compared to "brick and mortar" stores. The competition responded with improved customer services such as providing better and simpler book search capabilities, extensive book information coupled with fast and convenient delivery to compete against the price dumping.

In general, new book search systems are introduced, allowing customers to expand their shopping experience.

For example, when matches were found, the system retrieved not only the title and author of the book but also relevant information such as cover page, table of contents, book reviews, etc. on the book and displayed them to the user. The search result and its presentation grant an experience close to going through the bookshelves at a bookstore. Additionally, online bookstores are providing services such as latest information on newly released books, one-to-one book counseling, bonus points or cash rewards, book availability notification, warranty service e-mail delivery, e-books, web magazines and music.

The members of the Korean Association of Bookstores operated their individual online shopping malls with some shared common functionalities. Different prices and award programs and inventory systems made the existing search system inefficient. As a result, simple searches like search by title took more than 10 seconds. The speed of the book search system represented a major set back while improving customer service at Hanseohyup.

The Korean Association of Bookstores identified the performance bottleneck as most significant growth inhibitor and launched a project to resolve this problem. The project team defined the following requirements to successfully compete with their book search system:

1) Implementation required being under minimal budget
2) Project time frame set at 1 month
3) System maintenance targeted to be more efficient than the previous
4) Integration with the existing system environment is mandatory
5) System to accommodate user and data volume growth while keeping response times

Adopting Interstage Shunsaku Data Manager to Achieve New Heights in the Online Business

"We suffered through a lot of trouble due to the slow response times of the previous web system. However, we wanted to make best use of our existing system and only allocated resources where needed, which turned out to be the performance of the search system," explains Sanghoon Lee, CIO of Hanseohyup. "During that time, we had learned that there is an indexless database engine called Interstage Shunsaku Data Manager (hereinafter referred to as "Interstage Shunsaku") from Fujitsu. Interstage Shunsaku's ease of operation, fast deployment and superb performance met all of our requirements. That is the reason why we didn't hesitate to choose Interstage Shunsaku for our search system. We deemed its schema-less deployment superior over any other alternative. With that concept we were assured that Shunsaku can take us to new heights in the online business."

Two Weeks of Implementation Resulted in 5-times Faster Response Times

The new book search system based on Interstage Shunsaku achieved remarkable results. Implementation time and response times of the system beat all expectations. Overall, the improved search system of franchised stores let to improved customer service.

•Project Implementation within 2 Weeks
The project started in February 2004 and was already operational 1 month later. The actual project implementation time was 2 weeks, which greatly exceeded expectations.

• Query Results displayed 5-times faster
The old system took more than 10 seconds to display results of simple searches such as searching for titles. After introducing Interstage Shunsaku, title's can now be retrieved 5 times faster, displaying results within 2 seconds. Clients are very satisfied with the faster speed and value the improved customer experience.

• All benefits of an innovative solution for a reasonable price
Interstage Shunsaku made it possible to introduce a vastly beneficial search engine at an affordable licensing price. Additionally, with Interstage Shunsaku operating costs will be slashed going forward since maintenance and upgrade are extremely simplified and Interstage Shunsaku's user interface makes it easier to add new user services in the future. All of this result in extremely competitive ROI results.

About Korean Association of Bookstores
‘Korean Association of Bookstores' (ex-Chairman: Nak-beom Choi) is a consortium of mid-sized bookstores across Korea, which was established in November 1999 with the objective of setting a standard for non-Internet businesses customer services and modern business practices. The consortium consists of 22 bookstores representing various geographical regions in Korea. The consortium organizes events, publishes/distributes book lists, promotes literacy and conducts education campaigns for the public. In addition, the consortium helps the member businesses stay competitive through group purchase and joint business operations. URL: http://www.bestbooker.com.

(System architecture)