Archive for B2C

Customer Intent: Profit by Understanding

destinationCRM.com: Customer Intent: Profit by Understanding

Fifteen percent of all organizations likely will have moved to intent-driven customer strategies by 2010, and will have achieved a marked advantage over those that haven’t, according to the report. “Building an intent-driven organization requires more than just matching the intent of the customer during an interaction with the intent of the organization,” Maoz writes. “It requires integrating the organization into the customer’s life so that the intent of the organization (typically revenue and profit growth) is met while pleasing the customer.” Click here to learn more!

Now that is true customer relations! It will change the very nature of digital stakeholder relations if implemented properly. But is this simply another fad or repackaging of old material? Time will tell.

4 October, 2005 | No comments

Ameriquest: Making Mortgages a Little Too Easy

Ameriquest: Making Mortgages a Little Too Easy

When Ameriquest put in place an automated system to speed mortgage processing, it cut more than half of the 50 steps used to administer loans.

However, it also eliminated some of the checks that verified that the information on an application, such as a borrower’s salary, was accurate.

An excellent case study with many different angles that addresses how various digital stakeholders used and abused the Ameriquest Mortgage system. While the system is in place and it is efficient it is still dependent on humans…which as this case shows can lead to problems when humans figure out how to circumvent the system.

22 September, 2005 | No comments

PortalsMag.com: A Portal for Retail

PortalsMag.com: A Portal for Retail

When Leo Hurtado joined furniture retailer W.S. Badcock in 2002, he faced a scenario that many of his cohorts in the retail world are all too familiar with. Though the 100-year-old Mulberry, FL-based chain had invested heavily in technology over the years, accessing and using the mishmash of operational and employee applications was a cobbled-together affair. Nowhere was this more evident than at W.S. Badcock’s 320 stores, which are scattered across seven states in the southeastern part of the U.S.

An excellent review how W.S. Badcock, the furniture retailer, used its portal to bring together various systems and improve performance.

14 September, 2005 | No comments

Are eBay and Skype a good fit?

Are eBay and Skype a good fit? | InfoWorld | News | 2005-09-08 | By John Blau, IDG News Service

Numerous industry experts are trying to answer that question after learning Thursday that eBay, the undisputed leader in online auction services, is reportedly in talks to acquire Skype Technologies, one of the world’s largest providers of free VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) services.

Now that would be an interesting combiantion. I would see few economies of scale, but there could be some cross-selling. Also this might allow Skype to remain independent and nimble. If this is a business investment for eBay it could be a good deal, but if they try to integrate the two companies, it could be a recipe for disaster.

8 September, 2005 | No comments

RedNova News - Technology - E-Tailing Enters Fast-Growth Trajectory

RedNova News - Technology - E-Tailing Enters Fast-Growth Trajectory

Online retailing has come a long way since the 1990s. Online retailers generated $90 billion in revenues in the United States last year, compared with just $8 billion in 1998, according to the McKinsey Quarterly, 2005. Direct retailers with physical stores captured 52 percent on Internet sales in 2003, while those without stores, just 32 percent.

A very informative article that examines who is making money online and how they are doing it.

7 September, 2005 | No comments

Internet’s Days As Tax-Free Sales Venue Are Numbered - BaltimoreSun.Com

Internet’s Days As Tax-Free Sales Venue Are Numbered - BaltimoreSun.Com

Jay Hancock, The Baltimore Sun

The Internet tax collectors are coming! The Internet tax collectors are coming! We can see the proverbial whites of their computer monitor-fixated eyes!

No, this is not a writing sample authored by Paul Revere, storming at midnight through the streets of Boston alerting denizens to the arrival of British troops.

This, of course, is a posting derived to illustrate the potentially severe repercussions of Internet taxation policies which will transform the manner in which we complete commercial transactions online in the future.

On Oct. 1 a dozen states will bypass Congress and launch a coordinated sales-tax collection regime aimed at shoppers buying goods across state lines on the Internet or in catalogs.

The fact that online vendors such as Amazon, states such as Maryland and Congress itself have balked at the initiative, called the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, should not obscure the central reality. The Internet’s days as a rootin’, tootin’, libertarian tax haven, a virtual Cayman Islands in a modem, are coming to an end. It’s open tax season on Internet customers.

Many Internet sellers are already dinging out-of-state customers for sales taxes after knuckling to litigation and other pressure.

“Over the past couple of years, something like 50 or 60 retailers have already started doing this,” says Joseph R. Crosby, legislative director for the Council on State Taxation, a big business lobby. “Many of them have decided it’s not worth the legal uncertainty, and they’ve just decided to go ahead and collect it.”

20 August, 2005 | No comments

Akamai Will Track Usage of Net News - The Boston Globe

Akamai Will Track Usage of Net News - The Boston Globe

Little-known company hopes index raises profile

By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | August 18, 2005

CAMBRIDGE — Akamai Technologies Inc., which hosts Internet content for other companies, including some of the world’s largest online news providers, today is set to introduce a ”Web traffic report” that will offer a real-time look at Internet news consumption globally.

Paul Sagan, Akamai’s president and chief executive, said the index could raise the company’s profile, though Akamai will not seek to profit from it — at least not initially.

Sagan, a former broadcast journalist and media executive, said Akamai’s goal was to contribute to the understanding of the habits and trends of news consumers. ”It’s not commercial,” he said. ”It’s purely because we think it’s interesting. . . One of the things you’ll be able to see is what kinds of events drive people to turn on their browser to news.”

”People have decided the Internet is how they want to be informed,” Sagan said. ”And this is one of the ways I think we’re all going to get a better understanding of when are people choosing to get informed and what’s driving some of their habits or their interests.”

Peter Christy of the Los Altos-based Internet Research Group states,

”It’s really a new form of operation for them,” said Peter Christy, principal at the Internet Research Group in Los Altos, Calif. ”Akamai has huge internal knowledge of what’s going on in the Internet, but until now they’ve provided very little of that knowledge to the public. If it turns out to be valuable enough to people, they can monetize it.”

20 August, 2005 | No comments

Worry Watch: Cleaning Up Personal Information

Worry Watch: Cleaning Up Personal Information

David Radin and Jes Scherder of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s “Interact: Computers & Technology” column offer rudimentary insights on the manner in which identity thieves are operating in today’s online environment.

20 August, 2005 | No comments

Apple Fixes Security Patch That Broke 64-Bit Apps

Apple Fixes Security Patch That Broke 64-Bit Apps

By Daniel Drew Turner
August 18, 2005

Apple Computer Inc. had to hurriedly issue an update Wednesday to fix a Mac OS X 10.4.2 security patch that prevented the operating system from running 64-bit applications.

The corrected patch, Version 1.1 of Security Update 2005-007, is available from Apple’s Web site or through Mac OS X’s Software Update feature.

19 August, 2005 | No comments

TimesDispatch.Com | iBOOKS AFTERMATH

TimesDispatch.Com | iBOOKS AFTERMATH

Mark Holmberg, Point of View
The Richmond Times-Dispatch
804.649.6822
mholmberg@timesdispatch.com

Having purchased and used an iBook Graphite Special Edition laptop computing system, I am unable to fathom the rationale for causing chaotic pandemonium in a feverish rush to a school district office in an effort to purchase a used, five-year-old iBook for fifty dollars.

Alas, Henrico (Va.) County officials were faced with such a scenario this week when savages had lost all sense of common courtesy and decency.

In Mark Holmberg’s column which appears in the online edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, you could view a portfolio of graphic imagery depicting adults run amok in Richmond, Virginia, as well as review commentary from Times-Dispatch readers.

19 August, 2005 | No comments

The Seattle Times: Personal Technology: Handhelds’ Appeal Clear, To A oint

The Seattle Times: Personal Technology: Handhelds’ Appeal Clear, To A Point

By Charles Bermant
Special To The Seattle Times

Seattle Times technology columnist Charles Bermant discusses the litany of handheld devices or PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) available on the marketplace and the manner in which PDAs have transformed our daily existence.

18 August, 2005 | No comments

The Seattle Times: Personal Technology: Internet Radio Brings World To Your Ears

The Seattle Times: Personal Technology: Internet Radio Brings World To Your Ears

By Linda Knapp
Special To The Seattle Times

Like her colleague Charles Bermant at the Seattle Times, Linda Knapp has an innate knack for conveying basic information about nascent technologies to readers from all walks of life.

In the case of the following column from the desk of Linda Knapp, the Seattle Times columnist is discussing the advent of Internet radio and streaming media content.

18 August, 2005 | No comments

Learn The Basics of Online Sales Before Jumping Into The Web

Learn The Basics of Online Sales Before Jumping Into The Web

From the offices of AllBusiness.Com, the champions of small business, the following step-by-step guide will teach you the pathway to financial prosperity on the Information Superhighway.

18 August, 2005 | No comments

Getting Control of Customer Communications

destinationCRM.com: Getting Control of Customer Communications

More often than not, inside the organization the customer is really a fragmented series of loosely related profiles. With different lines of business (LOBs) managing different accounts with different technologies, it’s difficult for organizations to gain a 360-degree view of each customer. But without this complete view, organizations face diminished customer loyalty and weakened brand identity–and it shows in the inconsistent communications they send out.

This is an issue that will not go away and in the future I believe the ability to treat the customer as a “complete” entity instead of multipe parts/views will be the difference between good and great companies.

3 August, 2005 | No comments

Internet Ad Pioneer Now Shunning Pop-Ups - Yahoo! News

Internet Ad Pioneer Now Shunning Pop-Ups - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK - A pioneer of software that tailors pop-up ads to Internet users’ browsing habits is beginning to shun a practice that has invited much derision and plenty of lawsuits. A new service Claria Corp. is launching this month will still deliver advertising to the computer desktops of Web surfers. Only this time, they won’t be annoying pop-ups.

Rumors are that MS is interested in purchasing Claria. Could this be a first step in cleaning up their image? Either way a change in business practices of “Gator” is a great thing for consumers.

1 August, 2005 | No comments

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