Dell E Marketing

dingle Enhances Online Marketing Capabili get marrieds and Improves Site Performance with art emcee 2000 Published family 2001 To improve procedure and enable complex online marketing compacts, dell provoked its online mer firetile system platform from Microsoft Site horde 3. 0 calling Edition to duty innkeeper 2000. The negotiable component-based architecture and extensive prebuilt functionality in commerce emcee enablight-emitting diode dingle to implement its bracing campaign capabilities in equitable hexad weeks of discipline time.The comprehensive campaign counseling system integrates with dingles quick customer relationship guidance (CRM) system, moving the union very much closer to its goal of a true closed-loop online marketing environment. Company Overview dell Computer Corporation is the worlds leading direct figurer system provider, with the companys award-winning customer service, industry-leading growth, and superior financial performance continu ing to differentiate dingle from its competitors.At the heart of this victor is Dells direct-to-customer agate line model, enabling the company to maximize its superpower to meet customer expectations while avoiding the unnecessary time and costs associated with retailers or other resellers. To Dell, the internet is the purest and most efficient form of the direct model, providing vaster convenience and efficiency to customers and, in turn, to Dell. To Dell, direct refers to the companys relationships with its customers, from folk PC users to the worlds king-sizest corporations. Approximately one-third of Dells U. S. 28 billion in annual revenues is achieved through the companys Home and Small Business (HSB) Division, with the remainder generated from sales to medium and boastfully businesses and institutional customers. HSB also maintains ownership of Dells online accessories store, which offers users a arrest selection of come only 30,000 competitively priced softwargon and peripheral growths from leading manufacturers, conservatively selected to complement Dells systems. Business Challenge As a postmortem examination system provider to many other e-commerce companies, Dell potently believes in using the products it recommends and sells.Toward this end, Dell traditionally has relied on Microsoft Site server 3. 0 Commerce Edition (SSCE) to provide significant portions of the e-commerce functionality needed for Dells complex Web site. Site legion 3. 0 provided great shopping cart and checkout functionality along with other benefits, but we were take all over looking for counsels to improve performance and get closer to our customers, says Gregg Hansen, teaching omnibus for Dell HSB. Specifically, we wanted the business leader to implement campaigns and use coupons.This presented challenges referable to the heterogeneous environment we had in place, with commerce functionality provided by SSCE, customer data residing in a third-party CRM solution, and a mixed bag of applications used to tap the data. Solution To improve performance and facilitate complex online marketing campaigns, Dell decided to upgrade from Microsoft Site server to Commerce horde 2000. The company took a phased approach, first upgrading to Commerce Server to achieve greater performance and st susceptibility, followed by implementation of the bran-new functionality it provided that would improve the companys e-marketing capabilities. The componentized spirit of Commerce Server 2000 allowed us to easily break the project into phases, says Hansen. variety one consisted of upgrading the platform before the holiday lockdown, with phase devil focussed on implementing the new functionality provided by Commerce Server 2000 to improve our campaign capabilities. form 1 Greater Performance and Stability Enhanced wariness Capabilities After phase one, consisting primarily of the platform upgrade from Site Server to Commerce Server 2000, Dell saw s ignificant performance improvements in the atomic number 18as of shopping cart management and user checkout. We took return of the improved Commerce Server 2000 platform to increase performance by up to hundred percent in approximately areas, says Hansen. While our upgrade to Windows 2000 last yr resulted in much fall in stability and performance, migrating from SSCE to Commerce Server 2000 has led to additional improvements in these areas somewhatthing I attribute to the elimination of memory leaks and break dance use of the platforms core objects. As a result, the servers no longer require the amount of attention that they used to. The platform upgrade also provided Dell with significant benefits in the area of system authorities and management. The new management functionality in Commerce Server 2000 has enabled us to gesture away from a server-by-server management environment to a more centralise one, says Hansen. The Microsoft Management Console snap-ins for Commerc e Server 2000 make it easier to manage the large numbers of servers we employ and to bring new boxes online as we continue to grow. Phase 2 Comprehensive Campaign Management In phase two of the project, Dell took advantage of the extensive new prebuilt functionality in Commerce Server 2000 to enable targeted marketing campaigns. Using the new components inCommerce Server 2000, we were able to implement the functionality needed to build the fantasy of a campaign, tie it to a discount, and enforce itall with just hexadsome weeks development time, says Hansen. Had we tested to do it on our own and build this functionality from scratch, it would gain taken six months. As part of this effort, Dell created a custom Commerce Server 2000 Business Process Pipeline (BPP) component to handle coupons created for each campaign. The BPP provides a great framework for modeling and implementing commerce processes, says Hansen. Its plug-in architecture makes it highly flexible and extensible, enabling us to achieve the overall functionality we need by combine out-of-the-box pipeline components with others that are either internally developed or purchased from a third party. Pipeline performance has also been greatly increased over the previous version, resulting in better than 100 percent increases in some areas. To allow business users to easily implement campaigns, Dell uses the Commerce Server 2000 Business Desk. The Business Desk enables our business managers to create complex campaigns without having to involve development staff, says Hansen. We created extensions to the Business Desk that enable users to interact with our third-party CRM system to import lists of customers for a campaign. They can use the expression builder to define the campaign rules and create the coupons, which are then passed back to the CRM system for the e-mail campaign. When these customers are driven to the site, the new Commerce Server 2000 functionality weve implemented tracks the user s, enforces the campaign rules, and calculates the appropriate discounts. Moving previous with Commerce Server 2000With Dells new campaign management system now in production, Hansen is looking at other Commerce Server 2000 features to further enhance the companys online marketing capabilities. Were looking at the Commerce Server 2000 Targeting System to make product recommendations based on real-time customer behavior, which should significantly improve our ability to cross-sell additional items, says Hansen. Were also looking at taking advantage of new features in the Business Process Pipeline, such as its ability to support multiple ship-to locations. Why Dell Chose Commerce Server 2000 Dell selected Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 because it provided extensive out-of-the-box functionality that easily could be integrated into the subsisting complex environment. We looked atseveral other products, but Commerce Server 2000 was the easiest to result and get into production, says Hansen. The greatest benefits provided by Commerce Server 2000 are its extensive out-of-the-box functionality unite with a flexible component-based architecture thatcan be easily extended.With just six weeks of development, we were able to customize and integrate its prebuilt functionality into our existing environment, resulting in better performance, improved stability, and extensive new campaign management capabilities. For More Information For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft gross sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Resource meat at (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary.To access information using the World Wide Web, go to www. microsoft. com. For more information about Dell products and services, visit the Web site at www. dell. com. For more information on Dell/Microsoft solutions, please visit www. dell. com/microsoft. 2001 Mi crosoft Corporation. every last(predicate) rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS ORIMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, the . gain logo, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their single owners. Solution Overview Profile Dell Computer Corporation, headquartered in Round Rock, Texas, near Austin, is the worlds leading direct computer system company and a premier supplier of technology for the Internet infrastructure. Scenario Business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce Microsoft Technologies/Products employ Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server oo ? Business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce ?Microsoft Technologies/Products Used ? Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server operating system with Internet Informatio n run version 5. 0 Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Benefits By upgrading to Commerce Server 2000, Dell was able to improve performance in some areas by upto 100 percent. The flexible, component-based architecture of Commerce Server enabled Dell to use only the functionality the company needed and made it easy to extend the product where needed to meet the companys specific business needs. The greatest benefits provided by Commerce Server 2000 are its extensive out-of-the-box functionality combined with a flexible component-based architecture that can be easily extended. With just six weeks of development, we were able to customize and integrate its prebuilt functionality into our existing environment, resulting in better performance, improved stability, and extensive new campaign management capabilities. Gregg Hansen Development Manager Dell HSB Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 Customer Solution Using the new components in Commerce Server 2000, we were able to implement functionality to build the concept of a campaign, tie itto a discount, and enforce itall with just six weeks development time. Had we tried to do it on our own and build this functionality from scratch, it would have taken six months. Gregg Hansen Development Manager Dell HSB pic The . NET opening Servers are Microsofts comprehensive family of server applications for building, deploying, and managing next-generation, integrated Web experiences that escape beyond todays world of stand-alone Web sites. intentional with mission-critical performance inmind, the . NET Enterprise Servers provide fast time-to-market as well as scalability, reliability, and manageability for the global, Web-enabled enterprise. They have been built from the ground up for interoperability using open Web standards such as the Extensible Markup language (XML). The . NET Enterprise Servers are a key part of Microsofts broader . NET strategy, which will enable a distributed computing model for th e Internet based on Internet protocols and standards in order to revolutionize the way computers talk to one another on our behalf.