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To: allen v.w. who wrote (38672)	12/3/2000 12:57:18 PM
From: allen v.w.	Respond to of 40688

Intershop Customer: intershop.com Key Business Benefits : Intershop ePages and Intershop enfinity accommodate the stringent needs of selling to businesses and consumers through electronic marketplaces Intershop's open architecture significantly reduces time-to-market and maintenance requirements Intershop offers flexibility for marketplace-specific customization Word is out that the straightest road to an Internet marketplace leads through Nashua, New Hampshire, the headquarters of Intershop system integrator KeyCommerce. Companies such as Tradewind and Eventory, which are deploying electronic marketplaces for small- and medium-sized businesses, have KeyCommerce on speed dial for good reason: the two-year-old company has established a reputation for expertise in marketplace development. "Time-to-market is critical for these projects," says Mansoor Khan, CEO of KeyCommerce, "but cutting corners on features is not an option." Khan, who holds a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT, took an interest in electronic commerce in 1994 before it exploded onto the business scene. His experience in transaction processing and systems integration and his ability to listen carefully are invaluable when it comes to translating complex customer requirements into solutions. "Currently, we distinguish between two major models. One is the more structured vertical marketplace where the portal is the merchant of record and controls the business flow between buyers and sellers. The second variation addresses the fragmented relations between buyers and suppliers, where roles can reverse, turning buyers into suppliers and vice versa. It supports a multidirectional flow of business where the portal merely is a facilitator. Both have unique characteristics, and both can be served well with Intershop products." Research reveals Intershop's advantages In the course of due diligence, KeyCommerce investigated nearly all feasible products that promise marketplace functionality. KeyCommerce turned to Intershop after confronting tight deadlines and budget restrictions that required rapid deployment of full-fledged solutions that can be maintained with significantly less effort than competing products. "Deployment times of 12 months or more and multi-million dollar budgets are prohibitive for start-ups," according to Khan. "Out of the box, no product fits all business models to the T. But Intershop enfinity offers a wealth of standard features and its Java and XML architecture allow us to customize and add functionality very quickly." Khan also points out that initial cost analysis often overlooks the fact that the bulk of fees will be paid for service and personnel, not for licenses and hardware. "We found that enfinity requires less than 50 percent of the maintenance of comparable products. The standards-based architecture does not require engineers trained in proprietary technology, an important benefit and huge factor in saving costs." Marketplace functionality with enfinity and ePages To make enfinity fit a vertical marketplace model such as Tradewind's, KeyCommerce added sophisticated line-item controls to split one order into multiple items that are sent to various distributors for fulfillment. Returned order data, such as availability, shipping and back-orders, are reconciled into a single report for the customer. To automate and streamline transactions between buyers and suppliers in Tradewind's SME marketplace, KeyCommerce integrated enfinity with the business systems of both suppliers and customers. "The larger the company, the more likely they operate proprietary ERP systems that enfinity needs to talk to. It is a good test for flexibility because it is very unlikely these systems will change." When another young company, Eventory, came asking for an MRO marketplace solution to enable transactions between thousands of businesses, KeyCommerce identified the critical necessity for deploying self-provisioning stores that enable distributors with commerce solutions. "Intershop had the right product with ePages, which service providers continue to deploy successfully to thousands of businesses that are selling to consumers," Khan noted. "For Eventory, we needed to extend the functionality of ePages to accommodate up to 50,000 SKUs in the store catalog, allow customer-specific pricing, and accept online credit applications, purchase orders, and RFQs." By modifying ePages to fit the requirements of selling to businesses, KeyCommerce introduced this product to the supplier-centric marketplaces where portals do not take control of business flows, referred to by Khan as the "ePages marketplace." Time to market less than 90 days KeyCommerce continues to add functionality to Intershop's products, including auction capabilities and a Web-based workflow for enfinity that will automate the requisition and purchase order process for suppliers. Other marketplace-specific features include HTTPS connection, an XML conversion tool for Microsoft Access, and enfinity's integration with business systems on the supply-side. "We are building a library of modular functionality that can be easily applied to future solutions," says Khan, outlining his plans for KeyCommerce. "Our goal is to deploy any marketplace within 90 days."