e-commerce

Natural selection has already determined which are the successful internet-based retail sites. Survivors benefit from a rapidly growing market, and reinvest their gains so as to continue to differentiate, notably in terms of Customer Relationship Management approaches.

Moreover and as elsewhere, digital distribution channels are becoming increasingly important in the French market. Such channels are tightly linked with traditional sales channels from prescription and/or to purchase. Today, the stakes require e-commerce to establish a means of cohabitation with traditional distribution channels by allocating resources between the two in the best possible way.

In such a context, e-commerce providers attempt to optimize their online purchase platforms in parallel with their supply chains and other centres of customer contact. Web 2.0 technologies now allow for such companies to establish a personalized customer relationship. E-commerce’s particularities and short cycles (customer lifetime, sales process, etc.) imply that analytical and operational marketing should be tightly integrated so as to achieve greater relational efficiency and to reduce the duration between decision making (for marketing) and campaign launch.

Major e-commerce actors increasingly solicit Soft Computing for help:

• Definition and implementation of web 2.0 based e-marketing strategies,
• Creation and implementation of e-marketing platforms,
• Integration of marketing processes, analytical and operational, through the mutualisation of information and the set-up of integrated applicative solutions,
• Process re-engineering from the definition of product offers and campaign set-up, in both real-time (personalization) and batches (emailing campaigns),
• Total or partial outsourcing of customer marketing processes, simply by managing the customer database, or by taking charge of campaign set-up and execution (emailing and measurement),
• Defining customer and prospective customer qualification strategies, through the use of internet channels (questionnaire creation and management, business partners, and data enrichment techniques),
• Management consulting on commercial pressure, allowing our clients to take into account new legal restrictions and industry standards,
• Multi-channel marketing strategy definition – online and in coherence with offline actions,
• Consumer preference studies using Web analytic technologies,
• Customer Service optimization, built upon value-based customer segmentation.

Selected Examples

• Apec Next:
  Assisted in the development and set-up of relationship marketing program.
• Auchandirect:
  Consulted for the functional and technical architectures of decisional systems.
• Efma.com:
  Analysis of internet navigation data and enrichment of marketing database.
• Fnac.com:
  Created campaign management platform and rules permitting the optimization of customer communication efficiency while mastering customer demands.
• Fnac.com:
  Set-up of decisional and predictive tools allowing for the analysis and simulation of navigation/purchase coupling for the Fnac.com website, with the goal of website optimization and increased turnover generation.
• Lastminute.com:
  Implemented customer knowledge processes for operational marketing.
• SMENO:
  Defined internet-based relationship strategy using a Web2.0 approach; host the relationship database.
• A major player in the on-line employment sector:
  Designed relationship marketing system, allowing for greater content personalization with “one to one” marketing.

Main References

AOL, Auchandirect.fr, Boursorama, CAMIF, ChateauOnline, Club Internet T-Online, Fnac.com, Laposte.net, Lastminute.com, Mistergooddeal, Opodo, Promovacances.com, Redcats, Rue du Commerce, Surcouf, ViaMichelin.