Start-up pushes power for e-commerce sites

The Phoenix, Arizona-based start-up tomorrow debuts CommerceLogix, a new e-commerce package that it claims will give "Web-power" to the process of selling products through various sale channels.

"We're seeing a trend in the market where companies want to change their Web sites from marketing kiosks and connect their back office to the front office," said Laura Paige, senior director of product management. CommerceLogix enables companies with a broad set of needs and a complex product portfolio to use the Web to sell more across direct sales forces, business-to-business, or customer channels.

CommerceLogix sits on top of the SalesLogix Commerce Server and, in conjunction with an Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server database, captures information from sales automation applications and makes it available to company personnel using customer relationship management and other sales, marketing, customer service, and support automation applications, the company said.

Customer relationship management software has grown in popularity in recent years as companies seek to extend their business applications to manage complex sales, marketing, and customer service functions. The software is in many ways an extension of enterprise resource planning applications popularized by companies such as SAP and PeopleSoft.

With the popularity of customer relationship management software on the rise, more and more smaller companies are rushing to jump in behind the major enterprise resource planning players and take a bite out of the customer relationship management pie by providing their own front office products that connect to such software.

The CommerceLogix suite of applications includes eLeadSite, eOrderSite, and eConfigurationSite, which provide constant order taking, cycling of leads, sales calls, and customer orders, as well as matching of product configurations and services with customer needs.

eLeadeSite provides users with a prebuilt, customizable templates that allow them to collect leads on their Web site and push them to the Commerce Server for automatic follow-up.

With eOrderSite, companies can now enable authorized customers, partners, or employees to order from an online product or services catalog, maintained in the Commerce Server. For example, users placing an order can click a button to add a product or service offering from the catalog to a "shopping cart."

In addition, eConfigurationSite provides an information resource for salespeople, business partners, and customers, by specifying product and services configurations, order placement, and research and buying data.

"Companies need to integrate their e-commerce and front-office initiatives in order to obtain a single, consistent view of their customers and to optimally orchestrate their sales efforts," said Christopher Fletcher, an analyst at the Aberdeen Group. "CommerceLogix ties these key elements together in an integrated solution by providing tools for both the web-based storefront and outside direct or distributor sales channels."

Priced at $2,995, the CommerceLogix server will start shipping tomorrow.