Mercado Announces bSMART© B2B E-commerce Catalog Search and Storefront Management Solution
New Solution Offers Custom Catalogs, Bundling & Kitting Functionality, and
Out-of-the-Box Business Domain Knowledge – to Increase Online Business-to-
Business Conversions & Orders.
Pleasanton, CA: November 1st, 2005 - Mercado Software, a leading provider of e-commerce search & merchandising solutions for online retail and B2B organizations today announced the release of their new bSMART solution for B2B-focused online businesses. Mercado bSMART helps product line, channel, and marketing managers grow their revenue by selling more effectively online to other businesses and through partners.
Built on Mercado’s industry-leading Commerce Search & Navigation platform, bSMART provides online businesses with accurate product search and catalog navigation – enabling their customers and partner network, through an intuitive sourcing environment, to easily locate and purchase the products that best suit their needs. bSMART introduces enhanced Commerce Management features including the ability to create custom catalogs for the “power buyer” who knows specifically what he or she is looking for and buys it repeatedly – in accordance with company contracts, and/or with his or her specific role within the company.
SMARTer B2B “Merchandising”
Using Mercado bSMART, individuals responsible for driving online revenue now have the tools to be more effective at making it happen: bSMART provides accurate searching of detailed product catalogs, and also allows business users to optimize every component of the web storefront for active selling. Through an intuitive management interface, business users can create, schedule, and maintain programs to up-sell, cross-sell, and even down-sell if appropriate. bSMART is the only product in the industry to support promotional bundles and functional kitting – making it easy for businesses to drive revenue by increasing average order size.
“Merchandising and promotion have a negative connotation in some lines of business; but good merchandising in B2B means offering your customer everything he needs to do his job. Customers welcome relevant offers, and they need your guidance to order all the items they need,” according to Susan Aldrich, SVP and Senior Analyst, Patricia Seybold Group. “What could be worse than unpacking an urgent repair part, only to discover that a special tool is required – and you don`t have it? Merchandising platforms, such as Mercado bSMART, help you highlight complementary parts and create bundles that help your customers do their jobs.”
It All Starts With the Catalog
Mercado bSMART ensures catalog accuracy and richness through the inclusion of out-of-the box industry thesauri & taxonomies such as consumer electronics, packaging, security & safety, and computer & information technology – as well as a number of horizontal and general commerce-related domains. The Mercado bSMART Solution also makes extensive use of Mercado Uniclass©, the company’s attribute extraction and categorization solution for product catalogs.
“When asked about implementation issues during commerce search application deployments, site operators almost universally said data cleansing and taxonomic refinements were primary concerns, often commenting they were caught off-guard by the complexity of this process,” according to Eric Peterson, Senior Analyst at Jupiter Research, in his recent report Retail Site Search, October 2005. “Both the lack of standards for describing attributes of the same, or similar, products from various manufacturers as well as the lack of a standardized format for communicating attributes often leads to inconsistent parametric result sets.”
“bSMART gives business buyers the granular product information they need – across multiple product lines – to accelerate their productivity by making smarter, better, more informed corporate purchases,” said Corey Leibow, President & CEO of Mercado. “Among the many challenges that online B2B sellers face, is the struggle with data quality and consistency especially if their model is ‘distribution-oriented’. The diverse protocols, conventions & terminology used by vendors & suppliers to name products, are unique and therefore naturally inconsistent when seen from the buyer’s perspective. bSMART solves this problem at the product classification/attribute level, thus creating a ‘homogenized’ environment that delivers maximum consistency.”
Parties interested in more information on solutions for B2B catalog search and storefront
management are encouraged to visit www.mercado.com to register for Mercado’s upcoming webinar on November 16, 2005, featuring Susan Aldrich, SVP and Sr. Consultant/Analyst, Patricia Seybold Group.
About Mercado Software
Mercado is a leading provider of e-commerce search & merchandising solutions for online multichannel retail and B2B organizations. By enabling a superior buying experience and equipping business managers with a powerful platform with which to execute merchandising strategies, online businesses can aggressively grow revenue and foster customer loyalty. Sears, Williams-Sonoma, JCPenney, Macy`s, Target, Tower Records, Blockbuster, MSN, Caterpillar and OfficeMax, are some of the companies benefiting from Mercado’s solutions. For more information about Mercado Software, please visit www.mercado.com or call (888) 376-1400.
Media Contacts:
Kevin Lindsay
Tel: (403) 697-3183
klindsay@mercado.com
Mark Shapiro
(858) 573-0736
mshapiro@davismarrin.com
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