Los Altos, California-based Broadvision Inc is aiming to become to the Internet what SAP AG is to enterprise computing, with the launch of its One-to-One application system for on-line marketing and selling. The company was founded in 1993 to become an applications provider for Internet commerce. One-to-One, which has been two years in development, offers a three-tier environment enabling businesses to tailor their World Wide Web sites to individual customers, by enabling the customer to interact with the site. In this way, companies can build up very detailed profiles of their customers, enabling them to target specific advertising and promotions to individuals. According to Broadvision’s founder, president and chief executive Dr Pehong Chen, companies can build up long-term relationships with customers and ensure repeat business. Rich coming from someone who apparently built up a loyal customer base in his previous company, Game Technology Inc, only to sell it to Sybase Inc in 1992 for what he calls north of $100m. Chen admits that interactive, personalized marketing is not new, but says that the Internet is enabling it to be practiced on a very large scale. He says Broadvision looks at the complete life-cycle, from attracting customers to the site initially, encouraging them to want to buy over the Internet, offering incentives to give their details to the company and to stay with the company, and finally enabling the actual payment transaction. Chen maintains that most other electronic commerce firms at present are hung up on the actual payment transaction and issues such as security, without looking at getting people to make the transaction in the first place.
Dynamic command center
Of course, anyone for whom the novelty of personalized direct mail has worn thin may be slightly underwhelmed by a Web site that welcomes Jo Smith and bombards her with adverts and promotions relevant to her personal interests, likes and dislikes. However, Chen is convinced that by building up a deep understanding of your customer, you will keep them from the competition. One-to-One consists of a set of development tools, to enable Web authors to set up customized interactive Web sites, an application engine and Broadvision’s patented Dynamic Command Centre. The command center enables business managers to both monitor performance, for example how a particular promotion is being received, and to control output, for example dynamically sending a particular advertisement to a certain demographic group of customers. The system consists of a user interface, a set of business rules and links to users’ back office systems. It is written in C++ and supports both Oracle and Sybase databases, with access from Corba using Iona Technologies Ltd Orbix request broker. Since its beta launch in December, it has picked up what Chen calls major aggregator business, aggregrators being on-line service providers and virtual shopping malls rather than individual companies. It is providing a complete service for Virgin Entertainment Group in the UK, for its Virgin Net on-line service. Other customers include Prodigy Services Co for its virtual mall (CI No 2,811), Ameritech Corp and Thomson-Sun Interactive in the US, Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA, Itochu Internet Corp, Fujitsu Ltd and NTT Data Communications Systems Inc in Japan, and Hong Kong Telecom Ltd. Pricing for the system is naturally on a dynamic interactive basis, dependent on the number of customers accessing the site, and the number of services a company offers. One-to-One is shipping now, and is available direct from the company, and through its reseller partners.
