Small private medical practices and large health-care organizations alike use MyPSS.com to order more than 56,000 products including everything from basic bandages and syringes to test tubes and petri dishes. Radiologists use MyDIOnline (the DI stands for diagnostic imaging) to select from more than 8,000 SKUs including mammographic and X-ray equipment, film and chemicals. The portals are built on BEA’s Web Logic Application Server and run on BEA’s commerce component framework and personalization server. Customer information is stored in a centralized Oracle database. The company’s ERP system, sales- force automation application and databases are pulled together using IBM’s MQ Series middleware.

When a customer first registers to use one of the catalogs, say MyPSS.com, she can choose to see only the products that are relevant to her practice type. Once she begins placing orders, PSS maintains a real-time list of all the products the physician ordered during the past 18 months ranked in descending order by quantity. This section, called MyItems, makes it a lot easier for a doctor to find the 20 items he has purchased (out of a catalog of 56,000). PSS can also use the list to show one dermatologist what her colleagues are buying.

Wayne Meyerson, director of e-business for PSS, says the recommendations encourage people to shop more. "Because we make it so easy for people to buy online, we see a 20 percent higher average size order on MyPSS.com as opposed to through the traditional methods of the phone and sales rep," he says.

As an added advantage, PSS can use the personalization information it collects to determine whether a customer is a member of a small private practice or belongs to a much larger clinical system. If the latter is the case, David Ramsey, CIO of PSS World Medical, alerts PSS’s corporate accounts staff, who then attempt to open more accounts across that entire clinical system.

Ramsey says that big accounts were always tough for PSS to win in the past. But with its personalized tools, PSS’s sales force is pitching like Pedro Martinez. "With the technical ability we have to personalize a site in a day, we can walk in on a prospecting deal and show them a customized site with their logo, their colors and their content needs,’’ Ramsey says. "It’s interesting how well that plays to people’s egos. It is helping us win large accounts that we’ve never before been able to win."