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 Ailaros wrote:

Name one product GW makes that it sells in some markets but not in others.

Spray paints.

 Ailaros wrote:
In any case, translating the name of something from English into German is trivial, and you can put multiple language information in the same database. Plus, as mentioned, all of this stuff was already done for the old website. They should have spent literally no money at all on this.

You have obviously not worked and maintained many Multilanguage websites. It is not a trivial effort that costs "literally no money".

 Ailaros wrote:
There's no way they ran their own servers before, they would have just leased the space.

Space that they were already leasing before the website revamp. I can't imagine they decided to rent THAT much more bandwidth.

It still ain't free, man.

 Ailaros wrote:
Tell me where I can find a starter job as a SQL jock that pays 60k a year.

No doubt salaries did make up a big chunk of change. Undoubtedly they overpaid on this part. Logging a few new things into a database that already existed is, once again, trivial. Unless they rebuilt their entire database from scratch. Ten or twenty times.

Vancouver, BC. You can't keep a SQL admin that you'd want to keep for 60k a year. They'll be gone in 6 months, unless there is the clear possibility of a promotion to something in the 80k+ range. Then again, you can't really support a family in Vancouver, BC at 60k either.

 Ailaros wrote:

That require a few hours from a man who knows CSS to make tweaks to.

Ok, next significant project, please allocate a few hours to build a mobile website >.<

 Ailaros wrote:
They took a website that already existed. They changed the CSS a bit, threw in a new menu system in PHP and threw it on top of an existing database. You seem to be implying that they demolished a building and then rebuilt it entirely from scratch, instead of merely applying a new coat of paint to the exterior.

Even then, six million dollars is insane for what amounts to nothing more than an online catalogue that can take credit cards.

As I said, it's less than 2% of annual revenue, and they seem happy with the finished product. I don't see an issue with the spending. It is operationally different than the old website, in a way that changing stylesheets could not accomplish.

 Ailaros wrote:
GW has a few hundred products that it sells, most of which it does through traditional distribution, rather than online retail. It's not a mega multinational dealing with millions of clients and trillions of interactions, it's a few guys in a shed in Nottinghamshire hawking toys.

The kinds of enterprise solutions you're talking about are for something of a completely different scope.

GW has operations in many countries and is a publicly traded company with $200m annual sales. That's not a few guys in a shed in Nottinghamshire. If it is, I'd like to buy such a shed. Also, their stores are company-owned, not operator-owned entities that just license the name and buy inventory from GW.

Consolidation and reporting requirements -- having ONE system that can deal with the accounting requirements of 20+ different countries with very different tax laws, and bring it together into a single financial statement is significant. Those who try to marginalize this just don't understand just how much work it is. Not that this has any direct bearing on the cost of the web store, other than that the web store must be linked to an enterprise system that handles the transactions in those countries.

To give the simplest example, depending on the state or province within a country someone lives in, they must be charged different tax rates. That's not "just a table", because some jurisdictions have multiple taxes, and others tax on tax - for instance, (base amount + regional tax) * federal tax, rather than base amount * (regional + federal tax). Some jurisdictions have three levels of taxation; others have tax built-in to the price (but must be split up internally).




Automatically Appended Next Post:

clively wrote:
It cost them so much due to one thing: Oracle Consultants

Using those guys to build anything means it will be incredibly expensive.

Bear in mind that the webstore is not just the site at www.games-workshop.com The costs also include updates for their manufacturing/packaging/shipping system.

Still, they WAY overpaid.

For sure, but it would be not materially less if it said Accenture or IBM

Talys wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

Name one product GW makes that it sells in some markets but not in others.

Spray paints.

 Ailaros wrote:
In any case, translating the name of something from English into German is trivial, and you can put multiple language information in the same database. Plus, as mentioned, all of this stuff was already done for the old website. They should have spent literally no money at all on this.

You have obviously not worked and maintained many Multilanguage websites. It is not a trivial effort that costs "literally no money".

 Ailaros wrote:
There's no way they ran their own servers before, they would have just leased the space.

Space that they were already leasing before the website revamp. I can't imagine they decided to rent THAT much more bandwidth.

It still ain't free, man.

 Ailaros wrote:
Tell me where I can find a starter job as a SQL jock that pays 60k a year.

No doubt salaries did make up a big chunk of change. Undoubtedly they overpaid on this part. Logging a few new things into a database that already existed is, once again, trivial. Unless they rebuilt their entire database from scratch. Ten or twenty times.

Vancouver, BC. You can't keep a SQL admin that you'd want to keep for 60k a year. They'll be gone in 6 months, unless there is the clear possibility of a promotion to something in the 80k+ range. Then again, you can't really support a family in Vancouver, BC at 60k either.

 Ailaros wrote:

That require a few hours from a man who knows CSS to make tweaks to.

Ok, next significant project, please allocate a few hours to build a mobile website >.<

 Ailaros wrote:
They took a website that already existed. They changed the CSS a bit, threw in a new menu system in PHP and threw it on top of an existing database. You seem to be implying that they demolished a building and then rebuilt it entirely from scratch, instead of merely applying a new coat of paint to the exterior.

Even then, six million dollars is insane for what amounts to nothing more than an online catalogue that can take credit cards.

As I said, it's less than 2% of annual revenue, and they seem happy with the finished product. I don't see an issue with the spending. It is operationally different than the old website, in a way that changing stylesheets could not accomplish.

 Ailaros wrote:
GW has a few hundred products that it sells, most of which it does through traditional distribution, rather than online retail. It's not a mega multinational dealing with millions of clients and trillions of interactions, it's a few guys in a shed in Nottinghamshire hawking toys.

The kinds of enterprise solutions you're talking about are for something of a completely different scope.

GW has operations in many countries and is a publicly traded company with $200m annual sales. That's not a few guys in a shed in Nottinghamshire. If it is, I'd like to buy such a shed. Also, their stores are company-owned, not operator-owned entities that just license the name and buy inventory from GW.

Consolidation and reporting requirements -- having ONE system that can deal with the accounting requirements of 20+ different countries with very different tax laws, and bring it together into a single financial statement is significant. Those who try to marginalize this just don't understand just how much work it is. Not that this has any direct bearing on the cost of the web store, other than that the web store must be linked to an enterprise system that handles the transactions in those countries.

To give the simplest example, depending on the state or province within a country someone lives in, they must be charged different tax rates. That's not "just a table", because some jurisdictions have multiple taxes, and others tax on tax - for instance, (base amount + regional tax) * federal tax, rather than base amount * (regional + federal tax). Some jurisdictions have three levels of taxation; others have tax built-in to the price (but must be split up internally).




Automatically Appended Next Post:

clively wrote:
It cost them so much due to one thing: Oracle Consultants

Using those guys to build anything means it will be incredibly expensive.

Bear in mind that the webstore is not just the site at www.games-workshop.com The costs also include updates for their manufacturing/packaging/shipping system.

Still, they WAY overpaid.

For sure, but it would be not materially less if it said Accenture or IBM

I have worked on building and and maintaining multi language sites.

The cost of maintaining the site in multiple languages is pretty major. The cost of building the facility to create it, though, is relatively minor. The second cost is the one GW are talking about in their financial reports.