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> The web is NOT ever present, just because it is so prevalent in this > country does not mean it can be assumed to be present or usable in > other countries. Yes but if the web is not present then the chances are that nothing else is either. If you've got a phone then you've either got the web*, or you have to talk to someone who will type the data in for you....into a web frontend. Or mail/fax it to someone who can type it in...to a webfrontend. Or if its some kind of EDI then this can be put in ..into a webservice... Now if your erp system can't access your network you're up the creek without a boat already! All other potential solutions have the same points of failure - communications in general, and luddites. From experience a web frontend will manage >95% of client interactions and a similar amount of internal office requirements and take up less than 5% of the development time and cost. The remaining 95% development time and cost has been for people who want 'something different' and was easily patched into the web/erp setup - those development costs would have occurred anyway whatever the central system was. But just because the finance director has been given some proprietary toy that doesnt run WAP doesnt mean you should give up on providing the majority of customers with simple, effective and generally highly available method of interacting with you. Tom te tom te tom *at one place I worked it was cheaper to give certain customers a pc and modem and they could dial in to us to put on order/view their sales history,delivery etc etc - worked out about a £1K a customer as per about £15K for 'sales support' -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html