InformationWeek

Once a Unifi middleware layer is established, more connections can be added with relatively short development time, something iNet-Fi needed. "For us to be able to build additional aspects to our Web services with the Unify tools was of great value," Berretta says. "Once we've built one product, everything else just flows into the existing setup."

DWL's users also say the software delivers on the promise of spanning different customer databases. "Right now, we can't tell who of our investment-product clients also has a life-insurance policy and vice versa," Smith says. "Once we have control of information on a customer, we can use that info to cross-sell." Smith hopes that will help his company develop closer relationships with brokers, who care about customers, not policies.

"One of the reasons we're doing this deployment is to cross-sell," Tahan says. "Agents would like to know what one customer has without looking at 14 different screens."

Despite its popularity in the industry, not all DWL customers are insurance companies. The Body Shop International, a natural cosmetics and toiletries retailer in Littlehampton, England, uses DWL to distribute product information to its 1,700 stores in 48 countries. The Body Shop implemented the software in February, tying together applications to create a single system with one look and feel and one security model. Information on product availability, internal catalogs, and new offers now flows seamlessly from headquarters to the stores.

"We used to mail out an inch-and-a-half thick binder to each country every month," says Patrick Ballin, head of communications systems for the Body Shop. "Aside from the cost, it took several days to arrive. Then it would get lost and people had to resend it. Now it's all online."

The company considered other tools, Ballin says, but the DWL software was faster and less expensive. "DWL came in around the $100,000-plus range for development, plus licensing, and their delivery was six months. Big-name application developers were talking about $500,000 and 12 to 18 months," says Ballin.

Since the information being sent to stores is more accurate than in the past, Ballin expects to see a return on investment for the Unifi software by August 2001. The company also anticipates a big boost to its bottom line because of increased efficiency. "We have more accurate orders and swifter delivery, and those benefits are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," Ballin says. What's more, business people now have access to better information. "Before, they were making badly informed decisions or weren't doing their job properly," Ballin says. "How do you measure that?"

DWL's small size--the privately held company has only 125 employees--also makes a difference for its customers. "Because they're a relatively small organization, we're an important customer to them, so we had a high degree of commitment from them," Ballin says. Adds Tahan: "They came in full-bore and helped us develop this thing. I don't think 'missing dates' is in their vocabulary. If they tell you they're going to do something by a particular date, it's done." The only real negative, customers say, is that because the company is small and its reputation is growing, it could find itself short on staff if it becomes too popular.

Royal & SunAlliance also found a strange benefit to using a cutting-edge technology: It attracted IT talent. "There's the coolness factor," Stahl says. "We've had some searches going for new staff, and the presence of this technology in our company--not yet prevalent throughout the industry--has meant there are candidates who would rather come here. In a competitive marketplace, that can give us an edge at getting new talent."

DWL lists BroadVision, Clarify, Oracle, Siebel Systems, and Vignette as major competitors, but none of them offers real-time data connectivity and manipulation, LaFayette says. Harris doesn't see any major CRM player stepping forward with anything to compete against DWL at this point.

"They face threats from other vendors trying to mirror their solutions, but I haven't seen anyone with a real product to compete with them," she says. Siebel has made noise about entering the real-time market, but DWL's approach has been to offer to partner with more established vendors. Such partners include BEA Systems, GE Capital Services, IBM, Lotus Development, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems.

"Our goal to date has been: Let's prove ourselves in the marketplace and do all the work ourselves," says LaFayette. "A few months ago, we decided to engage services companies we've been competing with, to take them into verticals we target and do the services work." For DWL, such partnerships may be the price of success.

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