Abstract: A business application integrates a company's internal business systems with an e-commerce web site, so that company personnel can manage their business with a business application that seamlessly exports relevant, up-to-date data to a web site designed to interact with customers across the Web. The business application provides business functions for manipulating merchandising data stored in a merchandising database. In addition, to accommodate an intermittent connection to the Internet or otherwise to the web hosting server, the business application supports the generation of a replica, from the merchandising database, that can be exported to a web hosting server. A web application executing at the web hosting server generates web pages based on merchandising data stored in the partial replica. The customer can provide feedback, possibly representing purchase orders or customer information changes, for example, that can be automatically entered into the company's business system.

Abstract: A locker system which permits secure delivery, or collection, of goods at a location and that can be associated with a single household or disposed centrally with respect to a plurality of households. A set of lockers, which may be of different sizes, capable of being in different states, e.g. ambient, chilled, frozen, and which are lockable separately, is disposed at the location. In-residence IT systems including computer means, such as servers, permit householders to place on-line orders with retailers/service providers, such as over the Internet. Prior to order placement, an appropriate locker for the size and state of the goods is reserved, such as by the household server contacting a management server via an Intranet. An access code required for unlocking the reserved locker is supplied to the household server, and forwarded to the retailer/service provider over the Internet together with the order and reserved locker location information.