yet another wish.

[vistisen]

This wish is a bit more about product/marketing rather than software improvements (I am an IT architect, who pays for his model railway addiction by spotting possible synergies in IT systems and how they can be improved).
After finishing a design, comes the obvious question, what will it cost? I export the list of materials into an excel spreadsheet and add some prices from the Net. What about you trying to make an agreement with a few of the larger model railway online franchises, so that you could a "GET ONLINE QUOTE" button on the info ribbon. My thought is that if I order for example 20+ points and 40M of track in one go then there might be a few percent savings to be had.
I have no idea how many users you have, so I do not know how many resources it would be worth setting in the project. If it were I who was designing the project I would say that you ideally want to be using XML and webservices to get online realtime quotes, but a slightly lower tech would be that clicking the button generated emails to the chosen suppliers with the end users email as a answer address. The list of suppliers would be to be intelligent in terms of which track systems are used, and possible filtered by country as well.
The supplier's incentive is that they get larger orders, although they would need to have an automatic quote system, to make it worth their while, but such a relatively simple system that looks up a price against a partnumber (from an excel spreadsheet for example), adds the postage by total weight and has some sort of percent saving per price band) would not be too hard to make and you could sell such a module to them.
Your incentive is that these suppliers would obviously recommend your software to their customers.

[David]

Hello Tim,

With at least one on line store we have seriously discussed the opportunities for such a thing.
We have tens of thousands of users. The idea was that licensed AnyRail users can get a discount at their store.
That way, they get the larger orders, and we get more registrations.

It has been put on hold for a while as they are busy getting their on line store up and running.

A complete integration might be too much to ask, but we thought of a system where you could send the list of materials (minus what you've already got of course) to them, and they'll get back to you with a quote including the discount. Alternatively, you could enter your shopping list on their site and use a coupon code.

Of course, we'd like to get as many shops in as possible for each brand, gauge and country.

We'll see how it goes.

David.