Jill Delaney
Vality Technology, Inc.
617-338-0300
Jdelaney@vality.com
Stefanie Guzikowski
Beaupre & Co. Public Relations
603-559-5836
sguzikowski@beaupre.com
Vality Beacon™ Search Functionality Makes it Easy for Shoppers to Find
The Products They Want to Buy On Their First Try
BOSTON, Mass. (June 11, 2001) – Vality Technology, Inc. today announced a best-of-breed catalog search solution that makes it easy for online shoppers to find the exact product they are searching for.
Through its Vality Beacon™ search functionality, part of Vality’s new Product Catalog Solution, companies can provide their customers with more accurate and relevant search results to ensure customers don’t click over to competitive sites if they can’t find what they are looking for. According to Jupiter Communications, 48 percent of buyers cite the ability to search and find products on a Web site as the leading factor that will spur future online purchases. Yet catalog searches often produce no results or spit back pages of irrelevant results, causing frustrated shoppers to abandon their search.
This search problem arises because catalogs often lack logical categories, consistent terminology, and key parameters for searching, like size and color. In addition, users often type in search requests using terms that are different from those that catalogs use to describe a product, such as pants vs. trousers vs. slacks. They may also input errors like misspellings, adding to the discrepancies that prevent accurate search results.
Onlinesuppliers.com Corporation (http://www.onlinesuppliers.com), a leading Internet technology and solutions management firm, successfully implemented Vality Beacon to ensure that government IT buyers find the products and services they want, quickly and without fail.
“The biggest barrier to adoption of any online procurement system, both public and private, is the ability to find and source products,” said Kevin Ware, president and COO of Onlinesuppliers. “Vality Beacon is flexible, efficient, and effective in breaking down that barrier.”
Vality Beacon solves these search problems by providing accurate, relevant results, simplifying the shopper’s experience. The product’s fuzzy matching capabilities give it a high tolerance for misspelling, jargon, synonyms and other language anomalies. Vality Beacon’s capabilities include:
Phonetic and non-phonetic fuzzy matching that overcome spelling errors, typos and search-term order.
Comprehensive alternate term support, including technical and industry-specific language.
Match terms based on the same stem as words entered in the query.
A proven statistical technique called probabilistic matching that produces a reliable metric for effectively evaluating how closely the result matches the query.
Multi-dimensional search, which provide results when other search tools fail.
SciQuest (NASDAQ: SQST) (http://www.sciquest.com), a leading technology and solutions company that provides integrated e-commerce and asset management solutions for research enterprises and their supply chain partners worldwide, has successfully implemented Vality Beacon to provide faster, more accurate search results for its online catalog.
“SciQuest has some of the most sophisticated users of any e-commerce application, scientific researchers. We understand the critical role of search and content, and have continually invested in this critical capability for over four years,” said Rob Fusillo, chief information officer at SciQuest. “Vality Beacon’s built-in tolerance for search term ambiguity makes the e-commerce search process easier for us to implement and more effective for our shoppers. We believe that this gives SciQuest a competitive advantage.”
“By making searching easy and providing accurate results for both the buy side and the sell side, the Vality Product Catalog Solution helps convert shoppers into buyers, generating new sales and encouraging repeat sales,” said Mark E. Atkins, Vality president and CEO. “Just as important for sites, the Product Catalog Solution offers low cost of ownership. It is easy and cost-effective to implement, integrating easily with leading e-commerce environments to leverage existing infrastructures. It also provides scalability and high performance.”
About Vality Technology
Vality Technology (http://www.vality.com) is the recognized leader in enterprise data quality management and provides customers and partners with data standardization, matching software and consulting services. Vality’s customers and partners represent Global 5000 corporations engaged in finance, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, retail, telecommunications, energy, and utilities. Some of them include Aetna U.S. Healthcare®, IBM®, Marks & Spencer®, NatWest®, www.onlinesuppliers.com corp.™, Telstra®, and UPS®. These companies rely on Vality’s patent-pending technology to develop and deploy enterprise data quality management solutions that ensure the ROI of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Intelligence, e-Commerce and Supply Chain Management (SCM) initiatives. Vality was recently listed in Boston Magazine`s Best Places to Work; was named one of the 15 Stars of eCommerce by eCom Advisory.
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