Blue Martini CRM Sales Solutions

Transcription

1 Rochelle Shaw, Kathleen Taggart Product Report 2 September 2003 Blue Martini CRM Sales Solutions Summary Blue Martini offers Interactive Selling, used for guided selling, configuring complex products, pricing and quoting, as well as E-Commerce, for creation and maintenance of B2C and B2B Web sites. Table of Contents Overview Analysis Pricing Competitors Strengths Limitations Recommended Gartner Research Insight List Of Tables Table 1: Overview: Blue Martini CRM Sales Solutions Table 2: Features and Functions: Blue Martini CRM Sales Solutions Gartner Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

2 Corporate Headquarters Blue Martini Software 2600 Campus Drive San Mateo, CA 94403, U.S.A. Tel: Fax: Internet: Overview Blue Martini is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with additional offices in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Australia. Blue Martini offers modules for marketing, sales and service that support business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) processes, including specialized solutions for retailers and manufacturers. Table 1: Overview: Blue Martini CRM Sales Solutions Product Name Blue Martini Interactive Selling. Blue Martini E-Commerce. Current Version 5.5. Product Type Sales applications of CRM product suite. Price (US$) From 85,000 per CPU. Date Released June Target Applications Blue Martini offers specialized products for the retail and manufacturing markets. Its customers are in retail, industrial manufacturing, high tech, automotive, chemical, medical, telecom, media, energy, travel and consumer goods. Table 2: Features and Functions: Blue Martini CRM Sales Solutions Blue Martini Interactive Selling Basic Modules Add-On Modules Solutions Designer. Product Configurator. Pricing Configurator. Quote Manager. Guided Selling. Document Generator. Visual Modeling Studio. Mobile Sync. Prospect Portal. Business Intelligence. Content and Catalog Management. 2 September

3 Table 2: Features and Functions: Blue Martini CRM Sales Solutions Blue Martini Interactive Selling Blue Martini E-Commerce Basic Modules Add-On Modules Module Descriptions Solutions Designer Product Configurator Pricing Configurator Quote Manager Guided Selling Commerce Portal. Content and Catalog Management. Guided Selling. Personalization. Promotion and Pricing Management. Business Intelligence. Customer and Account Management. Relationship Marketing. Contact Center. Provides automatic mapping of business products and services, according to customer requirements. Allows for interactive navigation through solution possibilities, showing selection trade-offs and conflict resolutions. Permits navigation by any parameter order and allows broadening through usage of nested or collaborating models. Integrates with Extensible Markup Language (XML) programs for data input/output. Allows users to generate simple-to-complex product configurations, according to specific requirements in any order. Personalizes interface via Web browser, or mobile device, allowing multichannel usage by sales team, sales partners and customers. Integrates with enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), or sales force automation (SFA) applications. Deployable via a standard Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application service in less than 90 days. Automates complex pricing policies (that is, according to bundles and volume thresholds) for internal users and channel partners. Allows for price strategy testing of what-if scenarios, as well as price changes, without taking server offline. Supports multiple currencies and regional differences of uplifts or discounts. Allows sales team to select various terms (such as margins, time-phased, price tiers, category pricing) used in quoting and negotiations via a Web-based interface. Automates requests for quotations (RFQs) as products, prices and terms are added, negotiated and approved. Provides collaboration workflow between sales, fulfillment partners and customers to route quotes and distribute timely responses. Allows for quote history views and application of quote adjustments at both quote and line-item levels. Integrates with Blue Martini configurators, collaboration and order management applications. Presents interface templates according to customer type and shopping mode (such as gift vs. self-purchase). 2 September

4 Table 2: Features and Functions: Blue Martini CRM Sales Solutions Blue Martini Interactive Selling Navigates product catalog interactively, offering feature comparisons, self-service sales advice and product selection options. Narrows product choices and displays price/performance trade-off information based on answers to guided questions and needs specified. Integrates with external databases; ERP, SFA, CRM applications; and E-Commerce interface. Document Generator Provides for custom document generation in Word, Portable Document Format (PDF) and Visio diagram formats. Allows complex quote and product configuration data to be combined into a proposal document. Uses interface for manual moving of document sections during proposal generation. Visual Modeling Supplies users with a visual development environment while constructing and Studio maintaining Interactive Selling models. Provides model building tools, such as a visual expression builder and text editor, and allows model construction by teams. Mobile Sync Allows full use of Interactive Selling applications and models in sometimes or always disconnected environments. Enables seamless background, incremental synchronization of information between the mobile deployment and the main system. Prospect Portal Allows custom Web portal creation containing product information, technical papers, system configurations, proposals, notes and quotes for each prospect. Provides pre-defined templates for Web portal generation by sales team members. Facilitates prospect interaction along with secure access logon, capturing clickstream data for Business Intelligence analyses. Allows for multi-language content via Unicode standard and language toolkit. Business Intelligence Collects data from customer and partner interactions, via Web sites and portals, e- mails, points of sale (POS) and other touchpoints, with option to add Acxiom demographics information. Offers analytic capabilities to all skill-level business users via Web interface, including online transaction processing (OLAP) (OEM ed from Proclarity), visualization and data mining (both in-house applications). Provides reporting via Crystal Reports. Reveals actionable insight information on customer spending and campaign and promotion effectiveness via custom and automatic analyses. Transfers target lists and promotion rules for operational modifications. Provides advanced data mining algorithms for customer segmentation, cross-sell and up-sell determinations and creation of statistical summaries. Content and Catalog Delivers content-rich catalog data via multiple channels to Web sites, print catalogs, Management POS team members, online marketplaces and call centers. Translates content into any language and currency. Allows for user-friendly maintenance via Web interfaces. Manages security issues concerning content changes and approvals. Contact Center Allows customer service representatives (CSRs) to act in sales capacity by answering customer questions on products and orders. 2 September

5 Table 2: Features and Functions: Blue Martini CRM Sales Solutions Blue Martini Interactive Selling System Requirements Integrates with analytics, providing CSRs with cross-sell and up-sell product information. Provides CSR servicing capacity to update account information, such as customer profiles, order status, invoice history and returns. Platforms Sun SPARC Solaris 2.8, Microsoft Windows 2000 Server (SP3), IBM AIX Databases Oracle 8.1.7; Microsoft SQL Server 7.0/SQL Server 2000 (SP2), IBM DB Architecture BEA WebLogic or IBM WebSphere. Three-tier architecture. J2EE compliant. Third-Party SAP-certified integration to SAP R/3, using CA-XML interface, Web services, Integration Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), EAI-TIBCO, IBM MQ Series, SeeBeyond. Pre-build adapters to SAP R/3, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Oracle applications, J.D. Edwards One World, Ariba, Commerce One, SML, Enterprise JavaBeans, Java Message Service (JMS), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Microsoft Component Object Model/Distributed Component Object Model (COM/DCOM). Analysis Blue Martini s sales offerings comprise Interactive Selling and E-Commerce applications. The company s customers are found in retail, industrial manufacturing, high technology, automotive, chemical, medical, telecom, media, energy, travel and consumer goods. Blue Martini targets its client base by concentrating on retailing and manufacturing. The vendor s Interactive Selling application with its emphasis on complex configurations of products, prices and quotes is directed toward manufacturing, while Blue Martini E-Commerce applications are directed toward electronic storefronts for the retail industry and B2B channel and customer service Web sites for manufacturers. Some modules overlap between the two product lines in that included modules for one application may also be add-on modules for the other application. This does not mean that customers need to purchase the same modules twice, however, since the company licenses functionality on a use basis to keep prices competitive. Blue Martini Solutions Designer (previously Blue Martini Solutions Configurator) provides interactive guidance to sales force, channel partners and customers in determining the best combination of products and services needed to meet customer requirements. The interactive guiding process reveals trade-offs for choosing alternate combinations, as well as noting reasons for unfeasible selections. The selected product and services specifications can then be input into the Blue Martini Document Generator module as an application extension to automatically create sales proposals, with documented assumptions and diagrams. A further drill-down of complex product option selection is available with Blue Martini Product Configurator, which can be integrated to ERP, e-business, CRM or SFA applications. Blue Martini Pricing Configurator automates sales pricing policy implementation, taking into account complex pricing rules such as account bundling; margin-based, time-phased and category pricing; pricing tiers; uplifts; bulk discounts; and contract terms. The Pricing Configurator offers what-if pricing strategy, testing and pricing according to multiple currencies. Blue Martini Quote Manager automates the Request for Quote process by adding products, pricing and terms; obtaining approvals via collaborative workflows; 2 September

6 and maintaining quote accuracy with quick responses to customers. Quote Manager serves as a quote repository, saving quote configurations, which can be reused and adjusted at quote and line-item level. Blue Martini Guided Selling interactively aides customers in product catalog navigation, providing feature comparisons and sales advice for product selection. As customer needs are identified, Guided Selling offers narrowed choices and product trade-off advice, using templates tailored according to audience type and purchase objectives. Blue Martini Commerce Portal automates order processing and dynamic content presentation, hastening the purchase process by pre-populating key customer account information and providing flexible payment methods. Order Management features within Blue Martini s Commerce Portal include order tracking; standard or custom contract terms; automated price calculation of discounts, shipping and taxes; quoteto-order conversions; delivery tracking; inventory tracking; address book management; and order status confirmations. Unstructured and structured content including those with rich formats of images, videos, JavaServer Pages (JSPs), Java within Hypertext Markup Language (JHTML) and text are stored in the Content and Catalog Management module, accessible to channels including Web sites, print catalogs, POS, team members, online marketplaces and call centers. The catalog module can publish unlimited industry- or customer-specific assortments and prevent the display of out-of-stock items. Blue Martini Business Intelligence collects customer and partner behavior data from Web sites, portals, e- mails, POS and other touchpoints. Through a user-friendly Web interface, Business Intelligence provides users access to automatic and custom analysis, reporting, OLAP, visualization and data mining, including advanced data mining for segmenting customers and classifying purchases. Blue Martini Personalization distributes personalized content such as offers, greetings, messages, online content, s and call center scripts based on profile histories to targeted audiences, according to personalization rules. Blue Martini Personalization is integrated with the Content and Catalog Manager and Business Intelligence modules. Blue Martini Promotion and Pricing Management allows flexible publishing and multichannel synchronization of pricing and promotions to targeted customer segments, employees, accounts and partners. Market segmentation, pre-defined contracts and test marketing are implemented with Promotion and Pricing Management through utilization of promotions based on time, orders, pricing and triggers. Blue Martini Customer and Account Management provides business users with real-time customer profile management and a complex relationship management of an organization s structure, contact and opportunity information, as well as quote and order history. The real-time profile access feature of Customer Management allows profile information to be pushed to other applications, and integration with the Business Intelligence module provides trend, segment and customer insight analyses, as well as customer scoring. CSRs perform many retail sales functions contained in the E-Commerce applications; therefore, Blue Martini Contact Center is an appropriate add-on application. Blue Martini Contact Center provides sales via online collaboration with customers and guided sales program, profile and order updating, as well as up-sell and cross-sell recommendations, with integrated analytics and real-time quote generation. In order to facilitate integration between CRM components, the company offers Blue Martini Retail, a bundling of programs from the company s Marketing and E-Commerce applications. Blue Martini Retail contains Campaign Management, Loyalty Marketing, Gift Registry, Relationship Marketing, Real Time Customer Profile, E-Commerce, Business Intelligence, Clienteling (which is basically Account and 2 September

7 Contact Management), as well as an application called This offers customers and sales associates in-store, personalized messages, real-time customer profile lookups, high-value customer loyalty cards and event-triggered graphical or text messages. They are available via browser access, but recently the company also began offering a condensed software version to reside on a mobile wireless device, which provides 20 percent functionality. Blue Martini s channels solution involves partner portal creation, universal cataloging, Web site-to-reseller lead distribution, targeted marketing campaigns, links to Blue Martini-powered Web sites from online marketplaces to provide more product details and advice, and international language and currency localization. Partner portals provide resellers with product, company, usage tips, marketing collateral, latest research on products and competitors, inventory and order management and interactive forums for Questions and Answers (Q&A). Customers can choose between retail partners, and leads from conferences, trade shows and seminars can be centrally stored and directed to resellers. Catalogs, Web portals and other touchpoints can manage with Blue Martini applications supporting Unicode standards and double byte languages, and any currency, including the euro. Blue Martini Express is the company s name for a set of Rapid Deployment programs that allow most applications to be implemented within 65 days. Blue Martini Express-Retail E-Commerce promises deployment of a retail e-commerce Web site within 65 days; Blue Martini Express-Partner Extranet promises to launch a partner channel extranet in 55 days; and Blue Martini Express-Direct-To-Business Web Site promises a B2B Web site in 65 days. Additionally, Blue Martini offers various services on a consulting basis, including analytics, installation/upgrades and site monitoring. The company also has a Web Support Center for self-service software downloads, knowledge base, frequently asked questions (FAQs), Bug Database, Configuration Data, News Group and Alert Notices. Pricing Pricing for Blue Martini Interactive Selling and E-Commerce applications begins at US$85,000 per CPU. Blue Martini operates a training center in San Mateo, California, with topics centering on B2B issues, Web site development, Relationship Marketing, Clienteling, Data Mining and Visualization and customizing Interactive Selling. The company also offers training sessions in London; training costs are approximately US$1,000 per day. GSA Pricing No. Competitors In the area of sales configuration software, Blue Martini competes with a variety of vendors, chief among them Comergent, Oracle, Selectica and Siebel. Comergent Comergent E-Business System is used by manufacturers, channel partners and customers to manage their sales and service processes, including catalog, guided selling, configuration, quoting, order management, profile management, lead management and more using an XML-based messaging platform. The product s maintenance environment eases administering product configuration rules and ERP integration capabilities, and the breadth of its order management and partner relationship management (PRM) functionality makes it suitable for enterprises implementing an order management or PRM suite of applications as part of their sales configuration deployments. Comergent provides a reliable 2 September

8 architecture for managing product information, a good customer support organization and a scalable architecture. Oracle Oracle s CRM Sales modules include Sales Online, Mobile Sales, TeleSales, Incentive Compensation, Sales Intelligence, Partners Online, Quoting, Collections, istore and ipayment. The sales products utilize an application foundation called the Customer Model, which includes territory management, resource management, calendar, tasks, notes, attachments, escalation engine, knowledge base, order capture and interaction history. Oracle offers online services for E-Business Suite applications either on Oracle s Web server or on the clients server. Additionally, Oracle Configurator is a guided selling tool that supports multiple selling channels that delivers orders to customers as it provides interactive configuration throughout an organization not just for sales applications, but also for those for manufacturing and service. Its rule maintenance feature is easy to use, and it has proven its capability to solve both simple and complex configuration problems. However, Oracle retains some of its mobile problems; for example, its pricing maintenance feature cannot be deployed on a mobile laptop. Selectica Selectica offers configuration, pricing, quoting, analytics and negotiation management, as well as data management and connectors to third-party applications. Selectica Configuration includes functions for Web-based configuration and quoting for multiple product offerings, by different channels and highvolume, concurrent usage, and integrates with third-party sales proposal software. Selectica Pricer combines pricing data from spreadsheets, transactions, order entries, ERP and other systems into a repository and allows for price calculations based on required data, pricing rules and pricing factors defined at various levels, such as product, customer contract, geographic location, margin discounts and associated costs (goods, taxes, promotions, shipping and currency conversions). Selectica Deal Manager facilitates deal negotiation and approval process steps, allowing for what-if studies, product substitutions, bundling and delivery implications. Selectica Analyst collects buyer browsing and purchasing behaviors and provides marketing analyses and insight reporting. Selectica Application Data Manager, a Web-based interface, allows for changes to product and services data, while maintaining data integrity. Selectica offers Connectors to Enterprise Applications for automating online order entries and making data available to manufacturing, supply chain and custom applications from Oracle, SAP R/3, Siebel Sales and legacy applications with Selectica Advanced Development Kit. Siebel Siebel offers Siebel Configurator, Siebel Pricer, Siebel Quotes, Siebel Orders, Siebel Sales Catalog, Siebel Advisor, Siebel esales, Siebel Product and Pricing Analytics and Siebel Order Analytics as the company s Interactive Selling solution. Siebel Configurator uses business rules to compile complex orders accurately, used internally as a sales tool or externally to guide customer product selection via the Internet. Siebel Quotes and Siebel Pricer facilitate quote negotiations and consistent pricing methods. Siebel Orders allows for order storage, management and multichannel access, while Siebel Advisor identifies customer needs and provides sales recommendations via interactive questions and customer choices. Siebel Sales Catalog provides a content-rich product catalog to employees. Siebel esales offers a Web-based storefront, containing an interactive product catalog, search and product comparison mechanisms and online ordering capabilities. Pricing effectiveness analyses on product velocity, discounting and margin, pricing promotions and multichannel sales are available through Siebel Product and Pricing Analytics. Finally, analyses concerning quote-to-order conversion rates, payment methods, order trends and operational performance are found with Siebel Order Analytics. 2 September

9 Strengths Extensible and Integratable Architecture Blue Martini applications are J2EE-compliant, written in Java, and run on industry-standard application servers (for example, IBM WebSphere or BEA WebLogic). Applications can be easily extended, and they can integrate with third-party systems via Web services, XML, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), MQ Series, COM/DCOM or CORBA, as well as via enterprise application integration (EAI) adapters from TIBCO or See Beyond. The applications also can scale to tens of thousands of concurrent users with a sub-second response time (the vendor cites a benchmark case of over 47,000 concurrent users). Configuration Technology Blue Martini has dubbed its configuration technology start anywhere, go anywhere, since it allows users (sales associates, partners and customers) to select a flexible path to their solution, rather than forcing them through a sequential logic chain (as with rules-based configurators). This allows them to start on any parameter, choose any order, re-prioritize at any point and understand the precise trade-offs of every decision as they go. Pre-Integrated Analytics Architecture Blue Martini s Business Intelligence identifies the most profitable customers, predicts Web site and marketing campaign success, combines online and in-store shopping behavior data, targets address lists for direct mail campaigns and connects with personalization rules to automatically implement real-time content modifications. Limitations Web Hosting Not Offered Blue Martini applications are not offered on a Web-hosted basis. Therefore, customers wanting to avoid in-house IT involvement for maintenance of updates and new releases do not have Web hosting as an option directly from Blue Martini. Limited Target Market Blue Martini s focus is rather narrow, since it concentrates its marketing on verticals for retail and manufacturing markets. This limits the vendor, as such a narrow focus may lower the company s appeal to other markets. Recommended Gartner Research MarketScope: Sales Configuration Systems, M Retail Is in Blue Martini s Future, SPA Blue Martini CRM Marketing Solutions, DPRO Insight Blue Martini offers promising solutions for both manufacturing and retail applications. In the manufacturing space, Blue Martini Interactive Selling offers particular strength in its guided selling features geared to sales of complex products and services requiring automated product and pricing configuration. The product line addresses the retail industry needs for Internet and in-store POS guided sales with Blue Martini Retail, a combination of e-commerce and marketing applications. All of Blue Martini s application solutions for sales, marketing and service emphasize integrated analytics, with Blue Martini s Business 2 September

10 Intelligence featuring data mining, visualization, OLAP and Customer Management with Real Time Customer Profiling. Large organizations in the retail and complex discrete manufacturing sectors in Western Europe or North America will benefit most from these Blue Martini applications. 2 September