It’s highly instructive to notice closely what capabilities are featured in product promotions. Auto ads emphasizing dual airbags and crash test ratings and how well the car handles hazardous driving conditions tell you there is a great desire for security in cars these days, and those features in particular.
The same holds true for business Web packages. What do firms really want in an electronic CRM package — and what should you expect? Looking at recent NCR [http://www.ncr.com] enhancements to its SmartEC Decisions, a complete decision support solution for businesses engaged in Web-enabled electronic commerce, turns up some clues.
Adaptability. The product has always been available on Unix, but is now upgraded to run under Microsoft’s Windows NT operating system.
Customer Segmenting. By correlating data collected on the Web site with operational data drawn from an organization’s transactional system, SmartEC Decisions software is advertised to help companies better segment customers into meaningful categories. These categories allow a business to identify relationships between Web site usage, business transactions and relevant target market reference data — crucial to understanding how to deploy electronic commerce technology for optimal results.
Web-Generated Information. Realizing that the Web is fast becoming a more mainstream tool for transacting business and gaining information, the smart vendor will produce a system capable of incorporating the wealth of information generated by an organization’s Web site into its decision support systems. It should be able to correlate data collected from a Web site with business operational data and known demographic marketing information to produce actionable insights that will help maximize profits.
Relationships. In addition to providing insights about general buying behavior, a product needs to help uncover the relationship between online content, advertising and buying behavior. A good one can serve as an effective tool for measuring results generated by electronic marketing as well. For example, the banners that are used on Web sites to attract Internet shoppers can be more effective and profitable when the customers’ buying preferences are determined. NCR’s product allows a firm to gather and analyze customer data to understand customers’ needs better and reduce churn.
Technical Monitoring. NCR’s SmartEC Decisions Internet product comes with a component to support the effective management of online commerce from a technical perspective. Through analysis of network traffic pattern trends and user profiles, an organization can more efficiently manage the resources being used to host a site, and address any potential network capacity problems before they become customer satisfaction issues.
Scalability and Portability. Good products should offer the same industrial-strength features, functions and decision support capabilities for the Windows NT environment that have been proven with Unix. Many allow any Intel-based hardware system running Windows NT to be used as the host system. The scalability of the application should make it available for a broad range of customers extending from relatively small organizations to large enterprises.
Quick Start. Your business should be able to be up and running with it within 90 to 120 days. The product should support a rapid initial implementation that establishes the value of the technology and gives a clear sense of the return-on-investment that can be expected. You should be able to subsequently scale it to address the needs of your organization as it grows.
