When I go to the new site it's supposed to show what's available, and when you order, those items are supposed to be reserved and guaranteed to come," Edwards explains. "On the old site you could place orders, but you wouldn't know if the items were in stock and ready to ship."
SAP was a primary vendor in the transformation project, but according to SAP spokesperson James Dever, its contributions were limited to ERP and CRM applications. "Avon selected SAP technology as the back-end engine for its order entry solution," Dever told InformationWeek by email. "Avon did not use an SAP UI for the web front end. Avon selected and implemented a third party e-commerce solution for that purpose."
Exploring recent Avon job listings and Avon IT personnel profiles dating back to the early stages of the project, it's apparent that IBM WebSphere e-commerce software is the e-commerce software in question. WebSphere is an application and e-commerce server, so it would presumably connect to SAP's ERP and CRM APIs and deliver the front-end application and user interface.