CompUSA's E-commerce venture, created in March under the
name CompUSANet.com, remains a wholly owned subsidiary that
has a separate management team and looks well-positioned for
a public stock offering. Indeed, the main site
(www.compusa.com) is little more than a window into two separate sites: www.compusanet.com for online sales, and www.compusastores.com for information about the company's physical locations.
The online subsidiary, in Marlboro, Mass., is using the
back-end IT infrastructure, on a legacy enterprise resource
planning system, of CompUSA Direct, the company's former
catalog and direct-to-corporate business. The company has
bolted a Microsoft Site Server-based catalog onto that back
end. Later this fall, it will add Broadvision One-to-One
personalization and commerce. An existing call center is
also being outfitted to handle Web inquiries via E-mail and
chat. That system will create and store individual customer
profiles, purchasing behavior, and customized content and
applications. In addition to Broadvision, CompUSANet.com is
tapping CGN Marketing & Creative Services to redesign the
Web site and IBM's Global Service's group to create the
site's underlying architecture and user interface. CompUSANet.com's fall relaunch comes amid hard times at its
parent company. In June, CompUSA said it would close at
least a dozen physical locations and cut as many as 1,500 of
its 21,000 jobs. In April, its Net.com unit cut 200 jobs
that didn't directly support the new focus on E-commerce.
The company posted a $4.9 million third-quarter loss in May
on $1.69 billion in revenue.
Security Threat Report: July 2009 Update
In 2009, cybercriminals are turning their attention to Web 2.0, social networking platforms, and alternative tools such as PDFs. This security threat report examines new malware trends, and explains how businesses can defend against them....

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