当生产和销售业的巨头Procter&Gamble(P&G)收购Millstone Coffee时,这个成立了4年的Arabica咖啡公司还是一家西北太平洋地区的一个地区性公司。Millstone采用了直接供货的方式,它的司机(也就是作销售人员)将咖啡直接运送到超级市场,并清理和维护货架和研磨设备。为了使司机能够现场生成发票和赊销,Millstone为司机们配备了基于DOS的手持设备,通过拨号调制解调器与公司总部连接。在收购了Millstone以后,P&G为它的产品家族又添加了另一个品牌。同时,Millstone还承继了P&G的技术优势,通过移动设备应用的咖啡现场销售系统支持全美国450家分销公司。在对系统改造方面,P&G面临的最大的挑战就是在Millstone目前的手持设备中修改编码,以便能够使销售人员在交货过程中生成的信息输入到P&G的基于主机的运送和计费(OSB)系统中。完成后,Millstone的IT人员则将 When Procter & Gamble (P & G), the production and marketing giant, acquired Millstone Coffee, the four-year-old Arabica Coffee Company is also a regional company in the Pacific Northwest. Millstone adopted a direct delivery approach where its driver (also known as a salesperson) delivered coffee directly to the supermarket and cleaned and maintained shelves and grinding equipment. To enable drivers to generate invoices and credit on-site, Millstone equipped drivers with DOS-based handhelds that connect to corporate headquarters via dial-up modems. After acquiring Millstone, P & G added another brand to its product family. At the same time, Millstone also inherited P & G’s technological advantages and supported 450 distribution companies throughout the United States through on-site coffee sales systems for mobile devices. One of P & G’s biggest challenges in retrofitting systems was to modify the code in Millstone’s current handhelds to enable salespeople entering information generated during delivery into P & G’s host-based shipping and billing (OSB) System. When done, Millstone’s IT staff will