InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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October 23, 2000 |
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E-Commerce Platforms
E-Commerce Platforms Mature
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Other vendors have opted to integrate with leading content-management technologies rather than try to incorporate these capabilities into their toolsets. For example, Intershop and Blue Martini have partnered with leading content-management vendor Interwoven Inc. for this reason.
While this strategy has merit as a best-of-breed approach, it still requires customers to bring an addi-tional product in-house and there's still likely to be some custom integration required. No third-party integration is ever turnkey. For companies with limited in-house development and integration expertise, this isn't going to be a viable option.
Interestingly, some of the larger vendors in the space are conspicuously lagging in content management. For example, the catalog content-management capabilities of IBM and Microsoft remain works in progress.
Personalization is another key area that companies are investing in as a means of attracting and keeping online customers. Improving customer acquisition and retention and then increasing customer intimacy begins and ends with effective personalization strategies and capabilities.
Personalization is key not only for giving users an experience that's tailored to their own needs and preferences, but also for driving revenue via techniques such as cross-selling and up-selling. Cross-selling is the ability to observe customer buying habits and suggest related products they may be interested in purchasing. Up-selling lets one suggest that a customer upgrade his or her purchases to more upscale items.
Personalization also has special applicability in the business-to-business space for companies increasingly collaborating with business partners online. For example, a company could notify distributors or suppliers if it suspected that they're due for a replenishment of items they've purchased in the past.
Key to personalization are data capture and business rules. For example, a personalization-oriented commerce platform should be able to capture explicit information, such as data that customers fill out in a form or an enrollment database. It should also be able to collect implicit information, such as data gathered from user navigation and clickstream analysis.
In addition, the platform should be able to take advantage of third-party data, such as demographic information or directories obtained from other companies. If the product can access all of this data or capture it into a data mart, the next step is to apply business rules to this data to analyze customer activity and drive events that will ultimately result in further sales.
The leading contenders in the area of personalization are Blue Martini and BroadVision. Not only do their products make it easy for business users to set up rules and personalization scenarios, but they make personalization a pervasive part of their products.
For example, personalization can be used during the commerce process, for making suggestions to customers for cross-selling complementary products, up-selling more expensive products, or substitute-selling replacement products for out-of-stock items.
Personalization can also be leveraged for customer service, community building, and setting up push marketing campaigns--all using the same data.
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Illustration by James Yang
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