IBM announced it has acquired the business of iPhrase Systems, Inc. Financial details were not disclosed. iPhrase develops software that improves e-commerce sales, online service and support, and call center productivity by allowing Web site users to more easily find answers, make purchases and solve problems without expert assistance. For example, retailers use iPhrase technology to help interpret and understand online customer queries, even if they are misspelled or contain jargon. iPhrase software also enables merchandisers to dynamically generate customized Web pages with relevant products and shopping cart links, based on individual customer needs. iPhrase’s technology is compliant with Unstructured Information Management Architecture, developed by IBM Research that provides an open framework for the composition of sophisticated analytic applications that discover and leverage meaning from unstructured information. iPhrase software can tailor information specifically for the industry or domain in which it is used, providing a higher-level understanding of user queries. It adapts findings and results and presents them in a format that is easy to use and understand. iPhrase software complements IBM’s existing technology for delivering information in context through search and text analysis of enterprise databases, content management systems, file systems, collaboration systems and external web sites. http://www.ibm.com
Day: October 31, 2005
CrownPeak and WebTrends have formed a technology partnership to arm marketers to optimize web marketing content, and have integrated WebTrends 7 On Demand into CrownPeak’s web site management services. Marketers can optimize web site content and marketing campaigns on the fly by leveraging WebTrends content, marketing, and conversion analytics and CrownPeak’s workflow features that enable the Content Management System to automatically execute rules based on the web analytics results. Marketers can use WebTrends SmartView to display conversion metrics and visitor segment behavior superimposed on links, promotions and web pages for easy identification of the best areas to feature items. Using CrownPeak’s CMS, thresholds for views, revenue or “add to cart” clicks can be set so that products needing awareness are promoted to these ‘hot-spots’ once the previously featured item reaches the threshold as tracked by WebTrends. CrownPeak CMS users could setup product pages to always reflect what visitors are most interested in, automatically displaying the hottest product families on top-level pages and the current best-selling product SKUs on deeper pages. CrownPeak also automates the process of adding WebTrends SmartSource tags to web pages to minimize missing or erroneous tags. The CrownPeak-WebTrends integrated solution is available immediately, and is sold by both WebTrends and CrownPeak’s sales teams and channel partners. http://crownpeak.com, http://www.webtrends.com
