Planning and executing delivery routes is a critical aspect of any logistics process. Getting products to their destination quickly can significantly impact customer satisfaction and the overall success of your business. However, optimizing these routes to save time, money, and…
Entrepreneurship remains crucial in economic development and the promotion of social well-being. It improves the living standards of individuals through the creation of wealth for entrepreneurs, businesses, and society at large. Successful businesses play important roles that contribute to economic…
Like many serious eBay sellers, I have fooled around with the free tools offered by some of eBay’s partners. But I have to admit, I have no knowledge about who is looking at my listings other than a simplistic counter…
News, financial data and tech company Reuters is teaming up with San Mateo, Calif.-based business software firm Siebel Systems Inc. to develop and co-market solutions for managing customer relationships in the financial services sector. London-based Reuters , which culls data…
Hit hard by the slowdown in IT spending, business and e-commerce software company BroadVision Inc. is fighting back with the launch of its BroadVision 7 family of next-generation enterprise portal apps and the appointment of a new marketing exec. The…
Online loan operation LendingTree Inc. struck a mileage incentive marketing deal with four of the nation’s top airlines that lets customers get frequent flyer miles for home mortgage, home equity or auto loans. The Charlotte, N.C.-based company said it has…
E-commerce application provider BroadVision Inc. was trying hard to smile through some tears Tuesday, announcing an OEM deal with IBM after revising its guidance downward on Monday and restating some of its results for 2001 because of accounting problems. The…
Chief Financial Officer Andrew Hyde has quietly departed online CRM company Salesforce.com Inc., the second top exec to leave the privately held, San Francisco-based ASP operation in five months. John Dillon, the firm’s president and CEO of two years and…
Microsoft is making a bold move into the customer relationship management (CRM) market, and the question being asked in executive suites at established CRM companies across the country is simply: “Will Microsoft Great Plains cause Great Pains?” Anytime the Redmond,…
Verizon Online is executing on a deal to provide all its dial-up and broadband customers with free access to Brightmail’s spam filtering software, which sweeps a customer’s e-mail box and diverts suspected spam into a separate folder. San Francisco-based message…
Web measurement company comScore Networks Inc. said its review of consumer e-commerce for 2001 shows that sales at domestic online retailers (excluding auctions) surged to an estimated $53 billion for the year. The Reston, Va.-based company, which says it derives…
Continuing to move aggressively to become more than just another online brokerage, E*Trade Group Inc. launched a planning and advice product that includes new financial forecasting tools and the ability to consult directly with personal financial planners through Ernst &…
Both pure-play Internet retailers and brick-and-mortar merchants with online operations struggled to keep up with customer service e-mails this holiday season, according to data from an industry tracking firm. In fact, only 30 percent of all retailers tracked resolved basic…
Online brokerage and financial holding company E*Trade Group Inc. enhanced its customer service operation for the new year, rolling out a new Web-based interactive channel called Service Now. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said the service allows online customers to…
Finally gearing up for the holidays, American consumers spent an estimated $2.6 billion online during the first week of December, jumping 91 percent from the $1.4 billion spent during an average week in November, according to new study results. The…
If you’re an online retailer selling anything that might remotely be considered a holiday gift, it’s time to roll out your last-minute delivery plans, and that’s just what companies from America Online to Yahoo! are doing. AOL’s Shop@AOL e-commerce operation…
It took a little longer than expected, but Amazon.com has followed through on a vow to offer in-store pickup of many items sold via its partnership with the 600-store-plus Circuit City chain of electronics stores. Originally promised in November when…
Most e-commerce operators agree that making the online shopping experience more personal is a sure-fire way to foster more sales. And one way to do that is to hire a staff of customer service reps and have them available to…
If you’re doing business online, you have to deliver the goods as well as sell them, and a new industry tracking report is keeping tabs on which e-commerce merchants can get their stuff to the customers and which can’t. The…
There’s good news for online merchants as yet more surveys predict a ho-ho-ho kind of holiday selling season. But it comes with a warning for consumers as another report says online rip-offs of shoppers are on the rise. First the…
Brand awareness is the top influence on consumers when purchasing online, according to the first of a series of “eSpending Reports” for the 2001 holiday season. The reports are being put together by Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive (NASDAQ:HPOL) and NetRatings…
Siebel Systems Inc. said Monday it will acquire privately-held nQuire Software Inc. and will integrate and ship nQuire’s scaleable analytic server and intelligent Web products with Siebel 7, the next release of its e-business application suite. San Mateo, Calif. and…
Online travel sites today were focused largely on the logistics of handling thousands of customer inquiries as the nation’s airline system began the struggle to return the U.S. transportation system to normal, although it was unclear when flights would resume.…
BEA Systems Inc. signed product integration deals with business portal provider Epicentric Inc. and Fundtech Ltd., which sells e-payment and Internet banking solutions. That was the good news. Financial details were not disclosed for either deal. The bad news? Salomon…
Maytag Corp. has through the decades built a reputation for dependability, partly from building a long line of quality household appliances and partly from the image of the lonely Maytag repairman, the advertising icon who’s on call to fix a…
E-commerce company Global Sports Inc. issued an improved financial forecast today as it signed a deal with Kmart’s Bluelight.com that for the first time will see the company operating e-commerce businesses beyond the sporting goods arena. Bluelight.com signed a deal…
Upgrades in the highly competitive travel space abound as Travelocity.com today deployed a speech-driven customer service application and Hotwire delivered more cities, more hotels, detailed maps and an improved Hotel Ratings Guide. Fort Worth-based Travelocity (NASDAQ:TVLY) rolled out a voice…
Expedia Inc. launched a private label booking solution called Worldwide Travel Exchange (WWTE) and said AA.com, the American Airlines Web site, is the first customer. American will add hotel and car booking services to its site. Financial arrangements were not…
Q. Which came first, free shipping on two or more books from Amazon.com, or free shipping on two more books at Barnes & Noble.com? A. Does it really matter? One nice thing about online competition is that consumers benefit. That’s…
If you want to fool around with online pictures, but don’t want to plunk down a couple of hundred bucks for a digital camera, Wal-Mart has a deal for you — a new disposable camera that includes Wal-Mart’s Pictures Online…
FTD.com signed a multi-year partnership deal with American Airlines to offer both FTD.com and American Airlines customers frequent flier miles for purchases online. Customers will receive 10 American AAdvantage (the airline’s frequent flier program) miles for every dollar spent on…
After three months in beta, new travel site Orbitz went live this week, only to run head-on into one of those classic Internet good-news, bad-news scenarios: traffic was huge, exceeding expectations, but the servers and call centers were overwhelmed by…
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Hewlett-Packard Co. today unveiled an ambitious plan to develop and market new Internet solutions for the aviation industry through a jointly established Aviation Solution Center. The new center will include people, products and services from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ aviation consulting…
A new report, urging businesses to improve their reverse logistics, says that the value of returned merchandise purchased online is expected to reach an estimated $5.8 billion in 2005, representing 90 million items. The Jupiter Media Metrix research report contends…
Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, a unit of Paris-based communications equipment maker Alcatel (NYSE:ALA) said it plans to buy the CallPath computer telephony assets of IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM) for an undisclosed sum. CallPath is telephony software that helps integrates voice and data…
Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW) is teaming with B2B software company i2 Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:ITWO) for joint engineering, sales, support and marketing for next-generation CRM products. Customer relationship management solutions developed under this alliance are intended to enable iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions,…
Did you ever send an urgent e-mail to somebody, asking about something that was temporarily vital to you — like whether or not to make reservations for dinner tonight? I bet it left you checking your inbox every 20 minutes…
How far are we from virtual customer service reps — bots, if you will — that are absolutely indistinguishable from human sales clerks? Bots that could pass a Turing test — leaving you unaware if you are conversing with a…
I was once again reminded how fragile this consumer confidence thing is after making a couple of recent e-commerce type purchases. One of the transactions went as smooth as can be but left me paying more than I would have…
Remember that Jack Palance television commercial from a few years back, in which he intones in a dulcet voice: “Confidence is very sexy!”? The e-commerce version apparently is that “confidence is very profitable,” at least according to a recent industry…
So many e-commerce and corporate Web sites that I visit these days just seem to go out of their way to irritate me. And my No. 1 peeve (well, today’s pet peeve, at least) has to do with the telephone…
I don’t know what it is, but the folks at sales consulting firm Future Now always seem to come up with a fresh perspective in their grokdotcom newsletter, an online publication that describes itself as “the plain-spoken E-Business newsletter for…