Philippine E-Commerce and Companies Like Amphiltech
Do you know the flower shop called Holland Tulips? You could see them within some of the Metro Manila Malls. I once bought a bouquet of Malaysian Mums for a good female friend of mine on her birthday from this shop. The flowers are pricey but they appear to be well branded.
Well it turns out that Amphiltech, the company I just moved into, created the e-commerce website of Holland Tulips. The company actually created an internal E-Commerce Engine called AnnexStore. I checked the e-commerce system they created from scratch. It was pretty good. I met the programmers. I saw some of the cool Web 2.0 AJAX stuff they were working. I found it really cool.
Amphiltech Inc.(ATI) is actually a six-year old company that offered complete web-based solutions to international clients. They’ve kept a low profile throughout the years and focused on providing high-quality applications. Most of the clients have been U.S.-based companies.
Check out the website and you will see a roster of featured clients. One of Amphiltech’s popular clients is pcsforeverone.com. Try searching "custom computers" on google and you will see that this website is among the top search results. This website generates a lot of traffic. Just this March the traffic was a whooping 136,000 page views, with 25000 unique visits. To handle that much web traffic, the e-commerce engine had to be pretty stable.
After Pcsforeveryone, check out sourcecode.com, thinkmate.com, bermudagolf.bm, and bermudaresorthotels.com. On the Philippine scene, check out toner-inks4less.com.ph, sure-express.com, and of course, hollandtulips.com.ph.
Unfortunately, you only see the front end of these websites. Some these also have some cool backend technologies. There are other applications that Amphiltech has already made for clients. For example, ATI had developed a scheduling, payroll and billing system for an agency that provides medical staff like technicians and nurses in the Philadelphia area. The engine itself is not visible to the public.
It made good sense for the company to invest in web technologies. This was different from other tech businesses which relied to much on too much Microsoft client-server systems. I have no real gripe against Visual Basic applications, but I’ve found that rapid-application programs made from VB tend to be limiting. I always seem to need to i
nstall/uninstall the darn things.
By using open-source software like PHP/MySQL, ATI actually gave their clients access to more affordable programs. The technology is competitively priced if one compares it to MS-based systems. There is no yearly license fee from Microsoft here. It’s also much easier to deploy since the programs are browser-based.
But heck, don’t believe me too much. I’m actually now the marketing guy around ATI. You will probably think I’m biased. I’d like to say that the technology should speak for itself. If it can handle e-commerce intensive website like pcsforeveryone, then I think the application is doing pretty well.
In my opinion, though, you get e-commerce packages from companies like Amphiltech more for the customer service/support. Nothing beats talking to a real person. You ask what you need and an answer is given immediately. You can even gauge through body language if they really know what they are talking about.
Anyone with enough time could set up their own e-commerce website. However, there really comes a time when one gets stumped with the testing and experimentation. Anybody’s patience could be driven to the edge.
I can tell you that I’ve set-up a number of e-commerce applications for my friends. The websites I’ve prepared include www.thriftypinoy.com and parasayo.com. Thriftypinoy was not easy. It took me quite a while to perfect it to suit to my friends’ needs. It was rather tedious and cumbersome. I had to tweak the code and add a payment gateway that accepted even Peso priced products. I had to learn PHP coding to understand the logic of the system. Details like these are what you can pay people to do for you.
Let’s face it, you really just have to pay a price for quality.