Kingdom of Tobacco Develops Online Cigarette Order Placement System

Source from:  TobaccoChina Online 04/25/2011

Southwest China's Yunnan Province - the largest tobacco-producing region in China known as the kingdom of tobacco - has developed and is taking steps to set up an online cigarette order placement system named the New Alliance of Commerce, through which the 150,000 cigarette retailers across the province will be able to place orders for cigarette supplies online. According to information released at Yunnan Provincial Tobacco Information Technology Development and Application Achievements On-Site Appraisal Meeting and Show Exhibition held in the provincial capital city of Kunming on April 14, Yunnan Provincial Tobacco Company will give priority to the establishment of the New Alliance of Commerce online cigarette order placement system in 2011. So far, the cities of Kunming, Zhaotong, Banna, Yuxi and Lijiang have been designated to operate pilot projects of applying the New Alliance of Commerce online cigarette order placement system while 11 other cities and prefectures across the province will gradually introduce the system. "Through the New Alliance of Commerce online cigarette order placement system, cigarette retailers can check the quantity and wholesale prices of cigarettes of all brands and specifications in stocks, and do not have to worry about possible mistakes in cigarette order placement as a result of failure to clearly hear information interpretation by telephone survey interviewers. Moreover, cigarette retailers can gain full access to all types of policy information from tobacco companies through the system," a retailer in the vicinity of the Kunming Expo Park told the Kunming Daily newspaper recently. The retailer said that through the New Alliance of Commerce online cigarette order placement system, one cannot only check all the data of cigarette trade in the current month and in the past, but can also make a use of the system of information release and the message board online to raise questions about difficulties encountered in cigarette trade in a convenient way, in order to gain guidance and service in a timely way. According to Deputy General Manager Gao Tiren of Yunnan Provincial Tobacco Company, the New Alliance of Commerce online cigarette order placement system is designed to comprehensively cover the 16 prefecture- or city-level tobacco monopoly administrations, the 124 county-level tobacco monopoly administrations, and the 65 tobacco monopoly production and marketing enterprises in Yunnan, including the cigarette factories and supply materials production enterprises in the province. Gao said that besides the establishment of the New Alliance of Commerce online cigarette order placement system, Yunnan Province will also set up a provincially unified GIS platform in 2011. In future, all prefectures and cities across Yunnan will be able to realize online promotion of the establishment of a modern physical distribution system for cigarette trade, while the provincial tobacco industry will strive to provide a unified, public and open platform shared by all for the management of a modern tobacco agriculture, cigarette marketing and cigarette transportation safety control in the province, Gao said. Enditem