Office Supplies Partnership

[Brian Clark]

Last fall you announced an impending relationship with United Office Products. Since then we've heard nothing regarding the finalization of this. Please advise of the status of this service.
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[jlahner]

Four51 continues to explore partnerships and integration opportunities with leading industry suppliers, USSCO included. The USSCO integration project announced last fall has been in active beta testing. The test results indicate that more work is required from both USSCO and Four51 on the technical and commercial aspects of the offering to make it viable for the small to medium-sized print distributor that wants to sell office supplies on a limited basis. Today, we're pursuing other initiatives -- such as SAP integration and a QuickBooks connector -- that we think will have broader appeal and more significant positive impact on the print distributor and supplier marketplace. Therefore, Four51 customers should not make firm promises to their buyer-customers regarding the timing and the capabilities of USSCO integration.

Jim Lahner
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Jim Lahner

[Brian Clark]

Jim,

Thanks for your reply but I'm not certain as to what your answer was. On the one hand you indicate that it was (is?) in beta testing and that further work is required and then you mention that today you're pursuing the SAP and Quickbooks initiatives.
Speaking from the distributor end the Office Supply initiative is much more appealing than SAP and Quickbooks. The ability to offer current customers thousands of new products seems like a no brainer while the SAP and I assume Quickbooks are costly add ons that will be only affordable to Fortune 500-1000 customers for the most part. We have not made any promises to customers but did mention that we were working on the office supply module based on the announcement by Four51.
Is this initiative still viable?

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