ASP Targets Online Sales
Startup CrossCommerce this week makes its debut with a hosted application service that lets Web site operators display and sell any of about eight million items, including computers, clothes, flowers or books.
Startup CrossCommerce this week makes its debut with a hosted application service that lets Web site operators display and sell any of about eight million items, including computers, clothes, flowers or books.
US Office Products Co. (USOP), which racked up $3.2 billion last year through direct sales to businesses using its print catalog, is aggressively pushing into e-commerce to fend off dot-com upstarts and traditional rivals.
Open Market Inc. Monday is expected to unveil a suite of electronic catalog and content management application tools for creating online marketing campaigns and personalizing information presentation.
Known primarily for consumer sales of apparel through its print catalog and the Web, billion-dollar retailer Lands' End Inc. is pursuing an aggressive strategy to boost sales to businesses by letting them order merchandise online from customized Web pages.
Supply-chain software vendor i2 Technologies Inc. last week announced a merger with Aspect Development and the purchase of Supplybase, thereby locking up a pair of software specialists for negotiating with suppliers online. I2's goal is to challenge Oracle Corp., SAP AG and Manugistics in this area of e-commerce.
TransScape, a division of Pitney Bowes Inc., this week began shipping Conquest, server software to manage order fulfillment and shipping in a business-to-business environment.
Although its roots are in the electronic data interchange realm, Sterling Commerce Inc. next month will ship Web-based purchase orders, invoices and other business documents that can be swapped between suppliers and buyers online.
In its widening e-commerce efforts, Citigroup Inc. is casting off the stodgy banker image in favor of an entertainment approach to draw a big crowd on the Web.
SAS Institute Inc. has introduced its first out-of-the-box programs for analyzing Web site e-commerce activity, including buying and usage trends.
Talisma Corp. has begun shipping the second version of its customer-relationship e-mail management software, a package that can help corporations conduct and analyze e-mail correspondence with online customers - a form of correspondence often called "closed loop e-mail."
Ford Motor Co. this week aired plans to get its 5,000 car dealers on the same e-commerce page.
General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. today abandoned their attempt to create separate, competing online business-to-business trade exchanges and instead announced they would work together on a shared auto-industry exchange.
A lot of companies use data-mining to comb through databases to figure out which of their products sells best and where. Now a public school district is using equally sophisticated technology to analyze student performance.
New data warehouse software introduced by Server Advertisement Protocol last week should help companies make better use of data in their SAP America Inc. enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for handling e-commerce and other transaction-oriented applications.
If you believe the hype, every company but your own is on the Internet buying and selling at one of those business-to-business trading exchanges for industries such as health care, paper and steel. But the reality is that most of these Net market-maker sites have almost no transaction volume.