ATG Upgrades Its CRM App

Art Technology Group Inc. is the latest software vendor to appeal to IT decision makers who want to condense their vendor relationships by using suppliers that can address multiple technology needs. The latest major revision to ATG's flagship online CRM application ships Friday with new publishing and search modules, beefed-up personalization capabilities, and out-of-the-box integration with Siebel Systems Inc.'s CRM technology. Similar integration with SAP's ERP application will be available in the first half of 2003, as will a new analytics module.

"We've been asked to help our customers leverage their investments in ERP and CRM systems," says John Dragoon, ATG's senior VP of marketing and product management. Dragoon says that in developing ATG 6, the vendor wanted to address customers' shrinking appetite for long-term return on investment. Seamless integration with key enterprise apps will help shorten the ROI cycle by reducing integration workloads and improve customer service by updating customer data throughout the system whenever changes are made, he says. ATG 6, which runs on either ATG's Dynamo app server, BEA WebLogic, or IBM WebSphere, also provides out-of-the-box integration with content-management systems from Documentum Inc. and Interwoven Inc.

Martha Stewart Living has found time, amid the holiday season and its famous CEO's legal woes, to test ATG's publishing module. Eric Pederson, director of Internet development, says ATG's new software will let the company publish individual portions of its online catalog as they're updated, rather than having to update the entire catalog. He expects the publishing module's automated workflow, which will tie into Martha Stewart's content-management system, to provide more flexibility in posting content. Pederson also says the company will take advantage of the analytics software to view site activity in new ways. "Businesspeople are always coming up with different ways they want to look at data," he says.

Pricing for ATG 6 is CPU-based, with a typical deployment running about $100,000.