Over the next few weeks, software vendors from a variety of backgrounds will introduce products that combine E-commerce and customer-relationship management capabilities. These are more than just Web products that can be accessed through a browser-theyoffer integration of customer interactions and Internet transactions.

This week, Oracle will roll out its Oracle3i front-office applications, which include payment and billing features, and will start testing Oracle11i, a future release of those applications that ties closely to its commerce servers. Next month, Siebel Systems Inc. will launch Siebel eBusiness, a suite that combines front-office capabilities with E-commerce features such as product configurators, guided selling, and order processing. And Hewlett-Packard will step forward in June with products and partnerships that center around E-commerce and customer-relationship management.

Clarify, Pivotal Software, and Vantive are all working with Microsoft's Site Server Commerce Edition to bolster their customer-relationship management products with features such as personalization and credit-card authorization. Even supply-chain vendors Industri-Matematik and i2 Technologies are adding customer-relationship management capabilities and E-commerce functions.

These products promise an E-commerce experience that's richer for the customer and better tied into a company's other interactions with that customer in more traditional channels, such as direct sales. They also promise to simplify what has been a difficult task for IT departments: linking E-commerce transactions to customer records in back-end systems.

For most companies, says Bruce Alper, CIO of American Management Association, a New York provider of management books and seminars, E-commerce initiatives tend to be separated from the rest of the business-and so do the customers that come into a business through that channel. Salespeople who contact customers aren't likely to know what products or service requests the customers have entered online. Combining customer management and E-commerce "lets you look at a customer as a complete entity," he says.

As E-commerce becomes more critical, companies are eyeing ways to link their E-commerce platforms to the rest of their IT infrastructure. "If E-commerce is important to the organization, why should it be different than any other way you do business?" asks Alper.

The convergence of the front office-sales, service, and marketing-and the electronic storefront will help businesses infuse their E-commerce efforts with knowledge about the customer. The new products may not offer dramatically new

E-commerce capabilities; but they will give businesses the opportunity to build E-commerce on a front-office foundation. E-commerce functions can be linked to customer-profile databases, giving businesses the ability to track all of a customer's transactions, to personalize a Web page based on preferences and history, and to automate the process of acting on customer behavior.

Siebel will introduce its Siebel eBusiness suite, which will include modules for electronic sales, marketing, service, and channel management. Two of those modules, eMarketing and eService, will add capabilities such as a "call me" feature that will let Web customers initiate a live chat session with a customer-service representative. But the vendor's biggest reach into E-commerce is eSales, which includes an electronic catalog, price-quote technology, a product configurator, and an ordering module that links to transaction-processing systems, credit-card authentications, and payment services.

The modules put the technology in place for unassisted selling, which analysts say hasn't yet been part of most front-office applications. Customer-relationship management has "always required human intervention," says Steve Bonadio, an analyst with the Hurwitz Group. "The Web accelerates your ability to interact with the customer." Instead of salespeople manually entering customer preferences, he says, companies can use E-commerce products tied to front office systems to better track customer purchases and movements and react to them faster.

The new products are intended to complement traditional sales approaches and integrate with Siebel's existing infrastructure. If a customer uses the ordering module to buy a product and confirm a credit-card transaction, for instance, the software links back to Siebel's front-office apps, which store the transaction and form a record of the customer's Web activities.

Oracle3i is the latest version of Oracle's front-office software. While the package contains E-commerce capabilities such as billing, payment, and procurement apps, the vendor will combine E-commerce and customer-relationship management even more thoroughly in Oracle 11i, which is in limited release now and due for general availability in November. Oracle is integrating its E-commerce products with its front-office software so that all records relating to a customer are stored in a common file in a single database.

Old And New
That will help the American Management Association reconcile its E-commerce initiatives with its traditional offline sales activities, says Alper. The organization, which does 20% of its business online, has a "soft" E-commerce site that isn't linked directly to call centers. So if a customer registers for a seminar online, that transaction may not be immediately available to a call-center representative. The E-commerce system, which AMA hopes to have running by June, will also be integrated directly with Oracle's back-end systems.

Microsoft's Site Server Commerce Edition has made E-commerce integration easier for some developers by letting them tap site-building, payment, and transaction capabilities. Clarify, for instance, will unveil a version of its Clarify eFrontOffice in the second half of this year that will depend on the Microsoft products for payment processing, shipping calculations, and order fulfillment. Likewise, Pivotal will introduce in the third quarter the next version of Pivotal eRelationship, which will draw on Microsoft Site Server and Commerce Server engines for personalization, directory services, profiling, and membership validation.

That integration will help Government Computer Sales Inc., an Issaquah, Wash., computer-systems supplier to government offices, advance its E-commerce efforts. GCSI uses Pivotal's customer-profile database, combined with a homegrown configurator engine, to generate finely honed Web pages and catalogs for each customer. While the company has done much of its

own front-office-to-Web integration work, it's eager for Pivotal's new product, which will provide a direct link to payment systems. "At this point, people still have to fulfill orders by delivering to us a piece of paper," says Bob Quick, the company's director of IS. The information is then entered into the Pivotal software by hand. With the new system, orders will be made and fulfilled electronically.

The convergence of customer relationship-management and E-commerce has also attracted some names uncommon in front-office circles. Next month, HP will unveil a set of products, dubbed eCRM, that will combine HP's call center, SmartContact, with E-commerce and transaction-processing software from HP and partners such as BroadVision Inc. and BEA Systems Inc. The suite will mesh traditional call center and customer-interaction capabilities with E-commerce functions.

IBM later this year will integrate its Net.Commerce server with its Corepoint software suite, which offers sales, service, and marketing functions. In addition to being able to track Web transactions in Corepoint's customer information database, companies will be able to guide customers through Web-site purchases.

Other vendors say it's not enough to add catalogs and payment software to customer-relationship management packages and call that E-business. "The decision engines for traditional direct selling are different than those required for unassisted selling," says Steve Meyer, VP of marketing for front-office vendor Trilogy Software Inc. What's needed, he says, are sales tools that can handle complex configuration requirements while linking to other front-office packages for customer profiles and product details. Trilogy will address that need next month with a suite that offers help-desk functions, assisted selling, procurement, personalization, and management of complex sales channels.

Meanwhile, supply-chain vendor Industri-Matematik this week will launch a suite of order-entry and fulfillment applications aimed at Web businesses. Called Synapse, the system lets customers get information online on product availability, delivery dates, and order status, as well as make changes to the order before it's shipped. The Synapse suite also includes a new set of customer-relationship management applications that will be integrated with the order-management and fulfillment applications by year's end.

"The idea is to provide end-to-end visibility to our customers," says Louise Smith, VP of IT at Skyway Systems, a supply-chain services company in Watsonville, Calif. For instance, she says, a manufacturer can go to a site and see what's available from all the suppliers in its category, which materials are being shipped, and when they are scheduled to arrive.

Last week, i2 said it will acquire Smart Technologies. Smart's software lets customers receive support, interact with salespeople, and check bills through a personalized interface; i2 says it will integrate the Smart applications with its existing suite of Internet applications.

E-commerce companies are also moving into customer-relationship management. Commence Corp. this week will unveil Allure 2000, which includes an E-commerce suite with features such as a product catalog, shopping cart, order tracking, and product promotion. It also has a customer self-service module, which handles product and customer registration, a knowledge-base, events registration, and a link to call-center representatives.

The convergence between the front office and E-commerce has begun. The intersection of the two has the potential to dramatically alter both markets-and the way companies do business.