Endeca InFront is a new software suite focusing on customer experience management. The customer experience has fundamentally changed. It’s on the customer’s terms now: Customers may start their experience on a mobile on Google and expect a seamless connection throughout sites such as Facebook and corporate ecommerce applications.
Endeca eBusiness Forum 2011, London
eBusiness Landscape – John Andrews from Endeca
Products can be researched at a manufacturer’s website. Manufacturers get the opportunity to build up a relationship with end customers and therefore receive direct feedback.
Management of these different channels is a huge challenge. Traditionally we were used to a folder structure as on file systems (category structure and fixed taxonomy). It was easy to place promotions along the navigation path (scenario based promotion). Today more and more users start using a search box that allows for a completely different user experience.
Read more on Endeca’s eBusiness Facets blog.
Big Data is a Big Deal – Andrew Webb from Endeca
‹Big data› comprises today’s ubiquitous accessibility to all sorts of data in real-time on different devices. Twitter’s year over year growth is just one example of the massive new information sources.
McKinsey published a study on Big Data in May 2011: Only businesses that take on the Big Data challenge will survive:
- Making big data more accessible in a timely manner
- Using data and experimentation to expose variability and improve performance
- Segmenting populations to customize actions
- Replacing and supporting human decisions-making with automated algorithms
- Innovating new business models, products and services
McKinsey: ‹… we estimate that a retailer embracing Big Data has the potential to increase it’s operating margin by more than 60%.›
Read more about Big Data on Endeca’s Search Facets blog.
Complex eBusiness Landscape
Today’s environment is too fragmented with high TCO: Search & Navigation, WebCMS, Print, ERP, CRM, SEO, SEM are just a few of the required disciplines. The complexity is becoming more and more unmanageable resulting in poor and inconsistent customer experience.
Endeca Customer Experience Trends Survey
The main findings include:
- The online channel is no longer just an influencer of offline, but for many has become the main purchase channel
- Consistency across touch points is the most important feature of the customer experience
- Having all the critical product information available in context at the correct time in the process has become critical to driving customer confidence.
After website and web search, social is becoming a more and more important issues. Today suppliers have to be where the customers are.
Recently Facebook stores are building up clout at still low transaction levels.
Ads are not seen as a problem per se but untargeted or irrelevant ads are a problem. Today users are no longer intimidated by web stores, they usually buy when enough information is available or when they received a recommendation via their trusted set of advisers.
Today a targeted, optimized, relevant experience for every customer has become vital. The context is expected to be consistent across all channels.
