ELECTRONIC COMMERCE HITS AREA

Hillary Schmittzehe, executive director of VIP Industries, receives both e-mail and fax messages on his computer.

Margie Huber routes incoming e-mail and faxes at VIP Industries.

Remember memos? Those paper things that used to show up mysteriously on your desk with comments, criticisms or instructions to do get something done ASAP or risk another, nastier memo?

For many businesses, hard copy memos have gone the way of the manual typewriter, turned into speedbumps on the Information Superhighway, as e-mail takes over the corporate world.

Whether the e-mail is only networked within a single company or hooked up with the Internet, companies are using the electronic communication for everything from announcing the company Christmas party to tracking inventory and shipping to wooing customers around the world.

Electronic commerce -- using e-mail and the Internet for profit as well as fun -- is "a whole emerging area," said Jerry McDougall, dean of the College of Business at Southeast Missouri State University.

"There is significant interest in figuring out how to do business by e-mail," McDougall said.

The problem, he said, is that for many companies, electronic commerce means boldly going where no business has gone before: sailing right into Cyberspace, sometimes without a map.

"I don't want to say it's experimental, but it's such a new medium for carrying out transactions that there are no models. You have to tailor it to fit your own needs," McDougall said.

Businesses of all sizes can tap into the Internet, McDougall said, and a small neighborhood shop can share in commerce on a global scale.

Wes Kinsey, owner of My Daddy's Cheesecake in downtown Cape Girardeau, said he knew "zero" about the Internet when he commissioned his business website.

"I didn't even know how to get on it," Kinsey said. "We basically started shopping around for somebody who knew more than I did -- which was basically nothing -- on how to get set up."

The website has paid off, he said, both in orders and in public relations.

"We do get some orders off of it, and we do get some activity from all over the country and e-mail from all over the country," Kinsey said.

A few weeks ago while Kinsey was hawking his wares at the Best of Missouri Market at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, several people mentioned the website.

"We had some people say they were glad to hear we had the website because that's how they do their Christmas shopping," he said.

And it's gotten them one steady customer who e-mails in orders from Virginia Beach, Va.

Business hasn't been huge off the Internet, Kinsey said, since the website was started up "at kind of a slow time, cheesecake-wise," but he's optimistic it will continue to increase.

The website gives My Daddy's Cheesecake three advantages, he said: It increases the visibility of the business, it gives the business an edge into the day when business moves into a paperless environment and it's "kind of an image builder," even among people who don't surf.

"It's like, wow, you guys are really up with things," Kinsey said. "I think they're kind of impressed."

At VIP Industries, e-mail is used for internal communications, and the sheltered workshop should have its own website up in about three weeks, said executive director Hillary Schmittzehe.

VIP is currently on a website with another corporation, Schmittzehe said.

VIP's six area plants in Cape Girardeau, Fruitland, Marble Hill and Perryville, are linked by a computer network and can share e-mail communications, track inventory and send bills and invoices electronically among themselves and to suppliers and customers, he said.

"It saves a lot of time and paper and money," he said.

VIP is now looking at setting up an electronic inventory management shipping that would allow customers like Target and Kmart stores to link orders and shipping from VIP's plants, Schmittzehe said.

And in-house, orders, invoices, billing and inventory are all tracked by computer, eliminating most of the paper needed for filling orders.

The ability to track inventory on a daily basis is especially helpful in manufacturing and assembly work, Schmittzehe said.

Management can input the production order and find out immediately if the supplies are available to fill it.

"You're not working down to the end and finding out you don't have enough component parts to finish the job," he said. "It'll tell you as soon as you put the specifications in."