By 1998, the Internet had become an essential and useful tool for any business to relay their message to potential customers, to promote their products, and to make sales of these products.

The Internet Commerce Company (ICC) in Orange County, California recognized this and their vision began to take shape. They wanted to provide a unique service to their customers, which went beyond an e-commerce site. ICC wished to create an e-commerce site that would integrate with an accounting package. What they discovered was Vigilant, a product that was already seamlessly transferring data from customer's Web sites into the brick and mortar aspect of customer's software.

In no time, Vigilant and ICC had formed an alliance that has been quite successful for both. While ICC designs and constructs a comprehensive Web site, Vigilant provides the software to ease business processes. Vigilant's interface works with the web site to fully automate the process that follows a customer's on-line order.

When a new or existing customer places an order on the Web site, all of their information is relayed to Vigilant, providing simple and speedy processing and fulfillment of their order. The entire transaction remains secure. When the order is received through Vigilant, only a pick slip and invoice need to be printed in order to be expedited. Vigilant can also identify whether or not the customer is in the data bank, and if not, they are automatically entered. New and current customers' sales history are updated.

At the conclusion of each day, inventory quantities, product descriptions and price updates can be sent from Vigilant to update the inventory on the Web site. This eliminates possible errors in quantity and price on the Web site that may lead to customer frustration. New inventory items may be uploaded to the Web site as well, and all can be done easily by the user.

The virtual store, therefore, is smoothly linked with the brick and mortar store. The association of Vigilant and ICC has brought this benefit, and many others to the customers they support.