E-commerce software vendor BroadVision Wednesday announced its new MarketMaker application to help automate and personalise the creation of business-to-business marketplaces on the Internet.
In San Francisco, company President and CEO Pehong Chen said MarketMaker takes online marketplace software to a new level, adding relationship management to the core task of handling transactions.
"This is a third-generation product, rather than just a 'me, too,' " Chen said.
He said the product will allow companies to fully tailor their online catalogs to the needs of individual customers. So instead of offering 500 pages of products to a customer who only uses specific items from about 30 pages, companies can design online catalogs to fit each customer's needs. That way, customers won't be forced to peruse things they don't want.
Personalising online catalogs can enhance and enlarge relationships with suppliers and make them feel valued, he said.
"Relationships are going to be crucial to the exchanges," he said, rather than simply based on business transactions.
Janine Kromhout, a spokeswoman for Redwood City, Calif.,-based BroadVision, said that while competitors, including Commerce One Inc. and Ariba Inc., also sell e-marketplace packages, MarketMaker is the first to include such a deep level of personalisation.
"You really need to learn about your customers and treat customers as they deserve to be treated," she said.
MarketMaker, which is based on the company's One-To-One Enterprise platform, will be released next week, she said. The average price of the package for a typical company will be about $US400,000, she said.
Analyst Joshua Greenbaum at Enterprise Applications Consulting in Berkeley, Calif., said the new product puts BroadVision squarely into the e-marketplaces arena.
"They're really kind of launching themselves into a broader view of the market than they had," Greenbaum said.
But one component is still missing from BroadVision's line -- a supply-chain planning package that covers every base in an electronic marketplace. Greenbaum said the company has indicated it will find a partner to add that capability, but if BroadVision wants market leadership, it should add the function now. As companies quickly get set up and involved in e-marketplaces, he said, "user companies will need supply-chain management once they get past square one."
Albert Pang, an analyst at International Data Group in Framingham, Mass., said MarketMaker's personalisation and multichannel support features will give BroadVision even more leadership in the fledgling marketplace.
BroadVision has a customer base of 1,000 firms, while Ariba has 350 and Commerce One has 210, Pang said.
"BroadVision has a bigger footprint in the market, especially targeting the sell-side companies that also want to participate in these e-marketplaces," Pang said.
With Ariba and Commerce One electronic-marketplace offerings, personalisation engines must be bought separately and added on, he said. MarketMaker has the feature built in, which is a plus for many businesses.
"That would be pretty compelling for anyone trying to adopt or sell e-marketplace solutions," Pang said.