Smith-Gardner Unveils New Module for E-Tailing Suite
Smith-Gardener has unveiled Ecometry Knowledge Center, an analytical engine for its Ecometry application suite. Ecometry is designed for business-to-business and business-to-consumer retailers looking to automate multi-channel sales, service and order fulfillment processes.
The XML-based Ecometry suite consists of Web-enabled, customer-centric applications synchronized across both front-office and back-office business servers. The intent is to facilitate shared knowledge across the enterprise, providing a single view of the customer for each customer interaction channel. Ecometry automates the sales and service process for all customer interaction mediums: Internet, retail, call center, catalogs, TV/radio and wireless devices.
The new analytical engine, Knowledge Center, is a cross-channel data source designed to provide marketers and merchandisers with what Smith-Gardner calls "commerce intelligence." It gives multi-channel retailers a snapshot of transactional data in real time. Customer data is divided into three functional areas—marketing, merchandising and customer profiling—so that companies can use specific criteria to identify customers or prospects and target them with customized promotions.
The Knowledge Center leverages real-time data stored in more than 40 tables to offer an overall view of campaign performance, product performance and customer profiling. Companies have instant access to reporting and analysis tools to use in augmenting content management and campaign management functions.
Ecometry, launched in April, is a "killer" application suite for the HP e3000 platform and is also available for UNIX, Linux and Windows NT, as well as on Oracle, SQL and IMAGE databases.
Since the April launch, Smith-Gardner has been partnering to extend the functionality of the solution. In May, Smith-Gardner announced three important alliances. The first, with Applied Digital Solutions, provides for integration of Applied Digital's TradeWind point-of-sale and enterprise connectivity applications with Ecometry. The integrated solution will be tailored to specialty retailers' multi-channel requirements.
In another alliance, Smith-Gardner teamed up with Voci Corporation to integrate and market Voci's speech recognition solutions into Ecometry. The Voci solution is based on an ASP model, with fees charged on a pay-per-use basis.
The third partnership, with nQuire Software, is designed to drive commerce intelligence. The integration of the nQuire Internet-based search and analytic platform for structured information with Ecometry is designed to provide real-time intelligence across multiple sales channels.