From A To Z, Escalate Fixes Britannica.com
"We would go a day or two without any online store. It was pretty painful," said Lisa Girolimetti, executive director of consumer sales and marketing at Britannica.com, Chicago.
Worse yet, Britannica.com's merchandising employees had to call on IT staff to make even minor changes, such as price updates, to the site.
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Escalate's Lim touts benefits of system's built-in intelligence.
Given that Britannica.com gets an average of a half-million page views each month, and potentially more during the back-to-school and holiday seasons, Girolimetti knew she had to look for alternatives. She considered high-level products from Blue Martini, some Java component packages, Evergreen Internet, and ASPs such as Corio, USinternetworking and Escalate.
After quickly dismissing Java component packages as too costly,and after several other potential partners went belly-up,Britannica.com executives started leaning toward an ASP solution. They chose Escalate because, unlike other ASP solutions, the Escalate model would save money. In addition, they liked Escalate's "shared-risk model," supply chain management and Web marketing solutions.
Under the shared-risk model, Escalate makes money as Britannica.com generates revenue. Customers pay a monthly subscription fee for Escalate's services, and the ASP stands to increase its own revenue as its customer's base grows. "When we succeed, they succeed, so you know they're going to make sure the site is stable and that they're adding new functionality that will enhance sales," Girolimetti said.
Escalate manages Britannica.com's applications and platform, but the customer's employees maintain the site and can make changes even if they lack technical know-how. Escalate's merchandising management tools enable employees to run promotions and use the system's built-in intelligence to find out, for example, how well certain products are selling.
"In order to have something like sales intelligence, they would have had to build a data warehouse and own the platform," said Keng Lim, co-founder, president and CEO of Escalate, Redwood Shores, Calif.
ANATOMY OF A SOLUTION
>> COMPANY: Escalate
>> 2001 ANNUAL REVENUE: Not available>> FOCUS: Distributed order management application software
>> PROBLEM and SOLUTION: Britannica.com switches to an ASP after suffering chronic downtime with its Web storefront.
>> PRODUCTS and SERVICES USED: Escalate Supplier for collaborative supply chain order execution; Escalate Order for multichannel order management; and Excalate Direct for Web marketing and commerce.
>> LESSONS LEARNED:
• Outsourcing can save money and free up internal IT staff.
• Offer customers a no-risk or low-risk opportunity.
• Keep in mind future growth for both you and the customer.
Girolimetti said Escalate's product set was built with retailers in mind, particularly its core order management platform. Other parts of the system include Escalate Supplier, for handling order data between manufacturers, distributors and resellers, and Escalate Direct, an integrated suite of content management, merchandising, marketing and customer management applications.
"All of the features and functionality we needed were already there, and they update their products as our needs evolve," said Girolimetti.
Britannica.com can now communicate with salespeople on the road and outside suppliers using just a browser, Lim said.
It took 12 weeks for Escalate to put its solution in place. Gone are the days of frequent outages. Escalate now guarantees Britannica.com 99.99 percent availability, or only 53 minutes of downtime each year.
Britannica.com has been using Escalate's solution since January 2001, and sales at the site have increased 100 percent over last year, Girolimetti said, declining to disclose specific revenue numbers.
"It was quite a challenge for them," she said. "They came in during our busy holiday season and helped us keep our site up and running while we were reformatting our data."