ATG, IBM lead with B2C e-commerce platforms, Forrester reports
As e-commerce platforms more commonly support multi-channel retailing environments, Art Technology Group Inc. and IBM Corp. are leading the vendor community in terms of overall functionality, Forrester Research says in a new report, “The Forrester Wave: Commerce Platforms, Q2 2005.” Both ART and IBM “have a strong understanding of cross-channel strategies,” Forrester says.
Forrester adds, however, that a renewed interest in and increased spending on b2c e-commerce technology has caught most technology vendors unprepared, and that even ATG and IBM have slated many of their cross-channel features for future releases of their e-commerce platforms. “As firms come to the table with requirements for cross-channel and internationalization strategies, most of the vendors are hard-pressed to meet all the demands with out-of-the-box functionality,” Forrester says.
Forrester bases its report on reviews of 14 e-commerce vendor and user companies in February. It evaluated e-commerce platforms across eight groups of criteria: architecture, administration and management, catalog and content management, sales and marketing capabilities, customer data management, order management, reporting and analytics, and b2b-specific features.
Forrester cites ATG for having refined its b2c platform for more than five years into a “highly specialized and flexible product,” while it lauds IBM for making its applications easy to deploy. “ATG is a good fit for firms like Neiman Marcus that have complex merchandising requirements around trends and designers, or companies like Best Buy that have extensive catalogs and benefit from creating highly personalized site experiences,” Forrester says, adding that ATG also offers the leading technology for integrating online orders with in-store pick-up service. “IBM, which provides firms with a robust platform to build commerce applications, now packages much of the functionality for easier deployment.”
Forrester adds that Microsoft Corp. and BroadVision Inc. offer competitive alternatives to ATG and IBM. It says Microsoft’s Commerce Server is a strong product for retailers that want to leverage their existing Microsoft technology and skill-sets, and that the 2006 release of Commerce Server is expected to have an improved ability to integrate with other applications.
The BroadVision Commerce platform is a good option for retailers who want to get a b2c site up and running quickly, Forrester says. It adds that BroadVision and IBM are leading providers of technology that can adapt web site access to for in-store hand-held devices.
To support international expansion of online retail markets, ATG and IBM provide the strongest support for managing one central catalog that contains region- and language-specific content as well as the ability to delegate management of content to regional administrators, Forrester says. But Microsoft and Oracle Corp. provide platforms localized in the most languages, Forrester says.
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