ChemNews.Com VOL 6 NO 4
CD Chemical Catalogs Energize ACS
Bruce R. Gelin, Ph.D.
The exhibition halls at American Chemical Society national meetings
are always interesting places to see the latest in software, books,
reagents, and equipment for chemists. But there was something completely
novel at the August 1998 meeting in Boston-Lancaster Synthesis and
TCI America released their ChemOffice-based substructure-searchable
chemical catalogs on CD-ROM. Another leading chemical supplier, Acros
Organics, didn't exhibit at ACS, but demonstration copies of the Acros
Organics CD catalog were available at the CambridgeSoft booth. Fisher
Scientific is also distributing its own U.S. version of the Acros
Organics catalog.
As described in earlier issues of the Catalyst, electronic structure-searchable
chemical catalogs are attractive both to chemical suppliers and
to customers. The suppliers named above each have well over 10,000
products-many in multiple grades and packages-so it can be difficult
and time-consuming to find exactly what you need by paging through
thick paper catalogs. With a catalog on CD, the customer searches
more precisely and locates answers more quickly. Structure-based
lookups are especially useful to the chemist looking for a particular
core structure or arrangement of functional groups. And since the
catalogs are based on ChemOffice, most chemists already know how
to browse, draw structures for queries, and view the results.
For example, according to Paul D'hondt, Senior Product Manager
at Acros Organics, "We wanted to make it as easy as possible for
our European customers to locate the products they need, so we based
our electronic catalog on CambridgeSoft's ChemOffice."
CD Catalogs Attract Inquiries
At the Boston ACS, both Lancaster Synthesis and TCI America saw plenty
of interest in their new electronic catalogs. As J. Scott Shaffer,
Vice President and General Manager at Lancaster Synthesis, summarized,
"The new Lancaster CD Catalog is one of the most exciting developments
for our customers this year. Customers report that the substructure
search feature helps them find specialty compounds precisely and,
more importantly, quickly. This is important when selecting from our
catalog of over
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| The new
Lancaster CD Catalog is one of the most exciting developments
for our customers |
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14,000 chemicals. A direct result is the acceleration of our customers'
product development process. We are seeing increased business in existing
accounts, as well as inquiries from new accounts. This CD catalog
is not only a selling tool for us, but a problem solving tool for
our clients."
TCI America set up a large monitor showing their catalog to visitors
and passers-by. Many chemists recognized the ChemOffice based search,
drawing, and display screens, and others stopped in to try out TCI's
CD catalog. Mr. Masa Isono, President of TCI America, was there
to greet booth visitors and help demonstrate the new catalog. He
commented, "Our customers and other visitors to our booth were really
interested in our TCI America CD catalog. Some began using it right
there in the booth! Customers continue to tell us that this new
structure-searchable catalog is a much more efficient way to identify
and select products from our large catalog of high-purity specialty
reagents. We expect that our CD catalog will help customers get
their work done more quickly, and this in turn will have a positive
influence on our business."
And as John Fusco, product manager at Fisher Scientific notes:
"To better assist customers, Fisher Scientific strives to utilize
the best new technology to present our products and services. In
this case, that's the ChemOffice-based 1998/99 ACROS Organics Catalog
of Fine Chemicals, which we will send to thousands of scientists
in industry and research."
Another chemical supplier mentioned that a visitor to his booth
specifically asked whether he had a CD, structure-searchable catalog.
It's clear from this anecdote that the Lancaster and TCI America
catalogs made an impression on ACS visitors.
Multi-Supplier ChemACX Catalog
Complementing these single-supplier catalogs, CambridgeSoft showed
its new ChemACX Pro database with over 250,000 chemical products from
over 70 companies. With ChemACX Pro, you select from all these products
and companies with a single search. ChemACX Pro is a component of
ChemInfo Ultra, and is also available from CambridgeSoft as a WWW
subscription service, the ChemInfo Pro Web Edition. Subscribers use
their Web browsers with the ChemDraw Plugin (see related article on
page 8) to enter structural queries and view the results as live chemical
structures that can be copied and pasted into other applications.
Chemical catalogs are important to both suppliers and customers.
For the supplier, they present not only the products, but also the
company's image and its way of doing business: does the catalog
just passively list products and order numbers, or does it actively
help chemists in their work? For chemists, a supplier's catalog
can be a tedious mass of fine print, or it can be a useful tool
that really helps them identify and source their chemical needs.
With their new ChemOffice-based CD catalogs, Acros, Fisher, Lancaster,
and TCI America are leading the way in chemical catalogs by making
a strong statement in favor of customer convenience and efficiency. |
