E - Commerce News and Products (1).

Key to e-business success:

An innovative new book on the subject of e-business intelligence released by McCraw-Hill entitled `e-Business Intelligence: Turning Information into Knowledge Into Profit,' is poised,it is claimed, to become the standard guide for business leaders in the new Internet economy. The book's author is Bernard Liautaud, of Business O'bjects In the book, he focuses on the value of e-business intelligence showing how it can revolutionise the way companies conduct business. He describes strategies to access, analyse and share corporate data ,providing case studies from leading companies around the world The book can be ordered at www.amazon. com, www.barnesandnoble.com,

"Surviving in the Business World"

A new UK research study entitled `Surviving in the e-Business world' carried out by Ovum on behalf of Onyx Software and Apropos Technology shows that customers are not being given a choice when they try to contact companies online. 114 of the UK's leading online businesses, 44 of which were Internet start-ups, were tested to determine whether they were equipped to deal with visitors across a variety of communication channels, and how effectively they did so. The results were that 76% of companies who had invited customers to contact them via the Web failed to respond within 24 hours, or never even responded at all. The research was divided into two parts. The first dealt with how organisations interacted with customers over the Interact The second part involved researchers following up the Internet enquiry via an offline channel, such as `phone or fax, to determine whether the company had taken a holistic view of the customer and realised that the Internet enquiry and the follow up were from the same customer. The purpose was to determine whether companies were achieving convergence between their online and offline businesses.

The majority of companies, both dot.coms and `bricks and clicks' companies performed badly, demonstrating a lack of consistency across the business when it came to dealing with customers. Of the 97 companies inviting electronic form submissions or e-mails on their Websites, only 8% were able to refer to the original Internet contact when they were contacted over the telephone, even though the enquiry was known to be from a high value customer.

www.onyx.com

"Colonising the Emerging Digital Economy"

Buffer Group, has issued "E-Markets - Colonising the Emerging Digital Economy".

The new concept report investigates the steps that organisations must take in order to survive in the new economy. According to the report, new economics are enabling progressive and imaginative organisations to prosper, whilst those around them become caught in ever decreasing circles, due to an unwillingness or inability to change. Empowered by integrated technologies, new models are mining established economic and business fundamentals on their heads. The stark reality is that organisations must adapt to avoid failure. Realising that survival in the evolving environment demands fundamentally different skills is the first step along what is certain to be a long and tortuous journey. Mike Thompson, of Butler Group, commented: "The impact of e-markets and the of a new economy finds many organisations in a situation where their very existence is threatened. Some still refuse to accept this situation and continue to pursue the same strategy Amongst those with sufficient intelligence to recognise and understand what is there is panic and fear, as the stark realisation dawns that they must rapidly create value and sustain some form of competitive advantage in order to keep their heads above the rising water. As the rationale of organisations is to generate profit, success demands an understanding of the threats and opportunities posed by the new economic models.

www.butlergroup.com

European CIO Advisory Summit

Versata Europe Ltd, held a European CIO Advisory Summit in Monte Carlo, Monaco with senior business and IT leaders from across EMEA. The Summit brought together a small, influential group of business and IT leaders to discuss the critical issues surrounding the development and implementation of e- Business strategies and solutions. Attending the Summit were representatives from France Telecom, The Post Office and Cap Geminias well as representatives from IBM and senior members of the Versata executive management team, including Versata CEO and President, Jack Hewitt and Versata Chief Scientist, Eugene Wong.

www.versata.com

Business Community Puts M-Commerce Development on Hold

Mobile commerce may be branded as the technology that will transform buying patterns of the future by suppliers, but 62% of UK companies are taking a `wait and see" attitude to m-commerce according to research released by e-business Expo 2000, Computer Weekly and Compaq.

The main reasons given for the absence of an m-commerce strategy were cited as follows:

* 31% are concentrating on other areas

* 20% consider m-commerce to be unproven technology - 19% highlight a lack of budget - 18% mention skills shortages

* 17% claim there is a lack of-top level support.

The survey of almost 500 UK companies. completed during September and October 2000, shows that exactly half of respondees rate m-commerce as either `very or quite important' for their organisation's future success. More than one quarter of those companies who have not yet started to plan for m-commerce plan do so in the next 12 months.

Those companies using mobile technologies appear to be following a similar pattern of adoption as e-business. Some 17% currently use m-commerce for information, followed by 11% to offer services, 9% to enable their sales force/staff to work remotely, 8% taking orders and 3% to accept payments.

www.ebizexpo.com

Selectica guide to reducing shopping trolley abandonment

A guide for board-level directors looking to turn more online browsers into buyers is now available from Internet Selling Systems company, Selectica. Recent analyst reports have shown the number of virtual shopping trolleys abandoned increased from 67% to 75% in one year alone. Selectica's `Seven Keys to Internet Selling Success' advises on the importance of preparation, communication and commitment in the development of an e-commerce strategy. It details how to accelerate the sales process, increase sales numbers and enhance customer satisfaction. "Businesses have to face the fact that having an online strategy is no longenough," said Andrew Burford, managing director of Selectica. "The customer must feel compelled to return to the site time and time again. Token efforts will only attract surfers, not sales."

www.selectica

Guide to Effective Internet Fulfilment

LIS, specialists in supply chain execution solutions, has published a guide to help companies plan and execute the supply chain element of their e-commerce strategies. The guide, called the `Best Practice Guide to Internet Fulfilment' has been developed for `bricks and mortar' companies who want to market and sell their products over the web.

The document provides advice for all of the key supply chain components of an e-commerce strategy, broken into the following areas:

* The customer's interaction with the supply chain

* Handling orders

* Accuracy and transparency Managing

* Coping with excess demand returns

The best practice guide discusses how companies can adapt existing business processes and software systems to implement a full-scale e-fulfilment system that takes account of the differing needs of companies and consumers ordering over the internet. The guide can be requested by emailing [e-mail] or by faxing Sam Homer on 01628 532688.

E-business must be HR led

"The development of E-businesses will increasingly be led by HR professionals," claimed Dr Laurence Lyons of Henley Management College, speaking, at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's (CIPD) National conference.

In his talk, Dr Lyons described how technology has changed business fundamentals forever, and went on to outline what successful businesses now look like. He said, "As businesses increasingly create value from service, knowledge, and innovation, the HR function has taken central stage as the critical lever of change in today's organization. There is a heightening expectation from the board that HR will shift its role from simply providing the delivery mechanism to become a new business driver of change. HR is the only function with the relevant people-focus to create the soft strategies businesses now need to deliver bottom line results. However unless HR gets its house in order there is a real danger that other business functions will win the race for the strategic high ground." "E-businesses demand that we move away from a world of managers to a world of leaders capable of thinking and acting strategically. For this to happen HR as a function must also become more strategic itself."

www.cipd.co.uk

Only 5% of Companies Monitor their Web site

UK businesses are taking a `set up and sit back' approach to their Web sites, with most unaware of how successful they are as a sales and marketing tool. Research into 200 UK organisations by Visual Insights, shows that only 5% analyse criteria such as site performance, buyer activity and the effect of marketing campaigns. Fewer actually understand data contained within Web log reports, or use it to ensure their sites better reflect suffer behaviour. By judging effectiveness on gut feel rather than tangible results, businesses are unable to optimise sales and hit rates, and are failing to maximise return on investment without amending their e-business strategy to reflect customer behaviour.

www.visualinsights.com

IBM and Selectica e-commerce application

Selectica, have a global relationship with IBM to help businesses deploy e-commerce applications.

The partnership utilises of Selectica's ISS and IBM's WebSphere Commerce Suite to maximises of a company's e-commerce site by personalising the end-user from initial contact to completed sale.

The ISS integrates the WebSphere Commerce Suite to provide functions for content management, relationship marketing, order management, and payment management.

relationship marketing, order management, and payment management.

www.selectica.com

Home Shopping Superstore

Global Power provides a range of over 20,000 products within 10 major departments, ranging from decorating to pet care which it is claimed offers customers the Ultimate Shopping Experience.

Global Power says it has taken care in designing a navigation system to enable the user to view products within 3 clicks. Added to this is a search facility offering the ability to find any specified product within the site.

Wherever possible, within the 20,000 plus products, they have included comprehensive product information and images, enabling the customer to make a fully informed decision. There is no minimum order and free delivery on all products to mainland U.K. also they offer a no-quibble 30 day money back guarantee.

www.globalpower.co.uk

Documentum 4i ebusiness products

Using core technology from the Documentum 4i ebusiness platform, Documentum is introducing packages targeted to specific areas of e-business: Documentum 4i Web Content Management (WCM) Edition, Documentum 4i Portal Edition, Documentum 4i Compliance Edition, and Documentum 4i B2B Edition.

Each Edition provides companies with a content management platform designed and packaged to meet a particular set of application needs including support and services, as well as integration with e-business technology providers. In addition, customers can purchase added components from the 4i ebusiness platform as their e-business grows.

Each Edition is individually priced and include a number of Documentum services, including maintenance and training. Edition prices range from approximately $150,000 - $500,000+, depending on the size of a company's deployment needs.

The 4i WCM Edition is designed for shortening time to Web by enabling companies to shift the burden of Web content production from the technical team charged with building, maintaining, and deploying the site, to the business owners of the content.

The 4i Compliance Edition is designed to enable compliance with standards and regulatory rulings that govern how a company does business. The Edition provides the set of products required to control, audit, report, and secure the processes, which produce trusted content, the basis for companies bringing their products to market.

The Portal Edition enables companies to deploy two types of portals - collaborative and corporate portals - with a common content infrastructure facilitating content syndication and other portal applications, Managing and linking unstructured content from both front- and back-office systems are provided in this Edition.

www.documentum.com

Global Commerce Server

Scala Business Solutions, has announced Global Commerce Server 1.1.A wholly-new feature in this new version is the addition of a multi-currency component. This will enable companies who do business over the Internet to perform conversions between currencies - including the Euro when loading exchange rates and currency information. "The tighter integration between Global Commerce Server and Scala Global Series gives users benefits in, for example, converting accounting systems to support the Euro, and it also enables the display of pricing and other data simultaneously in more than one currency.

Customers can place orders themselves, track and query deliveries, check their accounts and run reports over the Interact. Sales staff can use, a standard web browser interface to provide them with information from the Scala back office system to shorten the sales cycle."

www.scalaworld.com

StreamServe for E-Business

StreamServe for e-business, is designed to help companies communicate with customers, suppliers and e-marketplaces through a through a variety of information channels and formats. e-businesses must be able to exchange information and documents via print, email, fax, flat file, EDI, and the Internet, while simultaneously preparing for XN4L and mobile commerce.

StreamServe for E-business relies on a single component based architecture to deliver a communication framework. It encompasses three evolutionary dimensions of e-business communication: Document Presentation and Delivery, E-business Enablement, and E-business Collaboration.

Document Presentation and Delivery

StreamServe for E-business utilizes back end connectivity to most of the major business application vendors, such as QAD, Oracle, J.D. Edwards, and SAP. It pulls information, personalizes it, and publishes the document across communication channels, such as print, fax, and email.

E-Business Enablement

The product supports the various dialects of CAL and can handle Open Application Group, RosettaNet, BizTalk, and other vertical and application standards. Trading partners can exchange multiple formats of XML or do XML transformations to EDI or similar formats. StreamServe also offers wireless capabilities with WAP and SMS compliance.

E-Business Collaboration Organizations can also publish Request for Proposals to suppliers or e-marketplaces, post purchase orders, execute inventory reorders, handle other business transactions and offer bidirectional application integration into the business applications, like Oracle and SAP. It also leverages MSMQ and MQSeries for a scaleable massaging platform.

Pricing begins at 34,615 [pounds sterling].

www.streamserve.com

SQLab Vision

SQLab Vision, a tuning solution designed to quickly identify and resolve performance problems in Oracle-based applications. It is especially useful in e-commerce environments where transaction loads are high and tolerance for poor performance and downtime is low.

SQLab-Vision combines Quest's tuning technology with new non-intrusive data collection capability, impact analysis and expert tuning advice, enabling users to view problems or potential problems at both the database and application levels. It introduces Quest's StealthCollect technology, which captures information from both the database and the operating system at sub-second intervals without imposing an overhead on the database itself. The solution enables database administrators to identify and diagnose inefficient code in the application, including source code, and allows users to pinpoint performance issues in real time or troubleshoot performance problems that may have occurred earlier.

www.quest.com

esparto e-Procurement

e-Net Softwares' new esparto e-Procurement application has been designed for companies procuring direct goods and consumable MRO (maintenance, repair and operating) supplies and services. The solution is designed to streamline procurement processes and enable greater visibility throughout the supply chain.

The esparto e-business application suite - which is capable of running on all platforms and interfacing with all leading databases - is founded on esparto e-Commerce, e-Net's internet trading application. This has now been extended by e-Net developers to include e-Procurement and e-Supply Chain modules which can be implemented as stand alone or integrated with existing back office systems.esparto e-Procurement is claimed to improve the overall delivery timeframe and the efficiency of supply delivery as well as reducing maverick buying and inaccurate order entry. This is possible as traditional paper-ordering is dispersed with enabling `just-in-time' buying, reducing the amount of inventory held at any one time esparto e-Procurement handles the full procurement cycles - from req to cheque.

wwwenetgroup.co.uk

Tower e-PIPES

Tower e-PIPES is a Portal information Processing Extension for e-Business. Tower e-PIPES which extends the Tower IDM Corporate Document Portal by providing a framework to connect e-Business transactions with traditional business processes in a single Tower e-PIPES enables organisations to transition to an e- Business model by delivering transactional content capture, folder and repository management and business process automation for both Web-based and traditional business transactions. Through the Tower IDM Corporate Document Portal, users can access folders of mission-critical business documents, such as applications, agreements, invoices, statements and correspondence, as well as public records for customer self-service.

Tower E-PIPES, allows paperless transactions that originate from the Web to be captured, managed, processed and completed automatically.

www.towertechnology.com

envision XML

envision XML allows users to implement and manage the XML schema for B2B applications and other Web based information technologies including the second generation Web.

The core of envision XML is a data dictionary that stores the definitions used in the schema and allows reuse of these items across the organization. Above the dictionary is the graphical editor providing drag-and-drop facilities to improve productivity, accuracy and standardization of schema development. The reverse engineering facility will let users incorporate existing schema into the dictionary to create their own schema management environment.