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Colinx Case

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CoLinx
A Shared Service Portal In Manufacturing A Case Study

About Surgency ™, Inc. and Benchmarking Partners ™ Surgency is an e-business solutions firm, building market leaders among the Global 1000. Surgency’s consulting and collaborative software accelerates the transformation and market impact of its clients. Benchmarking Partners is the industry analysis and research division of Surgency. Since 1994, Benchmarking Partners has been working with multinational corporations to advance emerging best business practices and assess the benefits of technology-based transformation. Acknowledgements: BroadVision, Inc. sponsored research performed in support of this white paper. We would like to thank all the BroadVision customers who contributed their time and insights to this process.

CoLinx Case Study Table of Contents

Contents
Company Profile
CoLinx History Timeline Organization Objectives and Goals Anti-Trust Policy Benefits for Manufacturers Marketing Capacity Utilization: Reining in Expense Individual Control of the Customer Relationship Logistics Benefits for Distributors

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1 2 2 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 6

Project Description
Background Strategic Goals Scaleable E-Marketing Personalization Consultant/Third-Party Support Integration Maintaining Control of Customer Relationship Business Rules and Training Look and Feel Observation Reports and Analytics Conclusion

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©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

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CoLinx Case Study Company Profile

Company Profile
The site is, essentially, a shopping mall for industrial components, where distributors can shop in four separate stores and fill four separate shopping carts. As CoLinx is perfected, all purchases will be delivered in one shipment.

CoLinx is a cooperative formed by four industrial components manufacturers sharing the cost and the advantages of an e-business marketing and logistics alliance. The four founding companies share a platform to offer their products to distributors via a BroadVision-powered site, PTplace, which originated in April 2000 as a Rockwell Automation e-business Web site. The founders, Rockwell Automation, the SKF Group, INA Holding Schaeffler KG, and The Timken Company, have their roots in the industrial revolution. Three of the four are over 100 years old. Their power transmission and motion control products, in one manner or another, make or support the turning of shafts to power products that convey, elevate, or agitate materials, gases, or fluids to drive pumps, fans, assembly machinery, crushers, etc. Though within the same overall industry, they overlap only slightly at the edges. The companies will continue to compete within the CoLinx framework, as well as in their other sales and marketing efforts. CoLinx is a shared services organization for the manufacturers to service and support their customers-in most cases these are distributors. The site is, essentially, a shopping mall for industrial components, where distributors can shop in four separate stores and fill four separate shopping carts. As CoLinx is perfected, all purchases will be delivered in one shipment.

CoLinx History
CoLinx was developed by the four founding manufacturers: Rockwell Automation, a division of Rockwell International, the SKF Group, INA Holding Schaeffler KG, and The Timken Company. The founding members based the CoLinx project on PTplace, an e-commerce solution Rockwell Automation created in April 2000. After a study of e-commerce options, Rockwell Automation created PTplace using BroadVision One-to-One® Enterprise to market products to distributors. Within the first 10 months, PTplace booked $59 million worth of business, offered nearly a hundred thousand parts on line, and had more than two thousand active profiled customers at a thousand customer locations. (In addition, the re-launched site will offer approximately 150,000 part numbers). PTplace was designed with considerable input from 33 leading Rockwell Automation distributors. Rockwell Automation conducted in-depth interviews during which the distributors described how, in an ideal world, they would want to do business. Using the extensive range of functionality offered by BroadVision, Rockwell Automation was able to build to their specifications. The initial system was beta-tested by these same distributors, which led not only to tactical insights regarding the Web site, but also educated the distributors so that they, in turn, booked $1 million in products during the first two weeks after the April 26, 2000 launch. Because of this early start, CoLinx describes PTplace as the first e-commerce site serving industrial distributors.

©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

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CoLinx Case Study Company Profile

Timeline
Rockwell Automation conducted in-depth interviews during which the distributors described how, in an ideal world, they would want to do business.

It took six months for the four founding manufacturers to form a legal agreement (see Figure 1). Beginning in August 2000, each founder provided a work team comprising representatives in different disciplines: legal, content, and technical. To guard against pressures and expectations that could implode the process before it got off the ground, all those involved signed non-disclosure agreements—which they took extremely seriously. Among the four manufacturers, about 50 people knew what was happening, and yet each kept the knowledge so tightly guarded that the new company’s formation was news on January 17, 2001, when it was finally announced.

Figure 1 Just four months span the time between CoLinx’s official establishment and the re-launch of PTplace.
Director of E-Commerce named for Rockwell Automation Power Systems

Rockwell selects BroadVision Rockwell and SLA establi shed ILA Rockwell team explore e-busine ss options

Rockwell launches PTplace

Founders begin forming Colinx

CoLinx officially established

PTplace re-launch

1997

Early 1999

Nov 1999

April 1999

Aug 2000

Jan 17, 2001

April 30, 2001

Source: Benchmarking Partners™/Surgency™

CoLinx described reaction to the announcement as overwhelmingly positive. While distributors had plenty of questions, they could immediately see the potential benefits. And management at the founding companies understood the value proposition of having a separate entity that would allow them each to more powerfully market products and build their brand using the Internet, to offer improved delivery, and to share the costs of a major undertaking. Before re-launching PTplace, CoLinx presented the new site to a Distributors Council to gauge their reaction and gather input for improvements.

Organization
It is a new take on a very old idea. “All we’ve done is torn a page out of the American Farmers’ Almanac, describes Don Louis, president of CoLinx. ” “This is not complex, out-of-the-box thinking, but more like a farmers’ co-op that jointly invests in storing and milling. Like the farmers, the CoLinx founders ” have jointly invested in Web infrastructure and warehousing (see Figure 2). The four founders have equal equity in CoLinx, with each represented by one member on the new company’s board. CoLinx was formed by the capital and hard work of the four founding companies, who selected staff and assets from PTplace and Integrated Logistics Alliance (ILA) as key ingredients to the success of their new business.

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©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

CoLinx Case Study Company Profile

Figure 2 The manufacturers market their products to distributors through PTplace, yet store all customer and transaction data on their own legacy systems.

Source: Benchmarking Partners™/Surgency™

Because of the efficiencies that stem from the cooperative relationship of the founders, the new organization required the addition of only four employees (a controller, a systems administrator, a database administrator, and a financial analyst) to the PTplace and ILA staff.

Objectives and Goals
PTplace presents the user with a choice of individual portal constituents, who are exclusively responsible for fulfilling the exchanges and transactions. This kind of portal is a “passthrough portal.”

CoLinx is a shared services organization. CoLinx, itself, has a commitment not to directly engage the customers (i.e., distributors) of its founders, but rather to serve them separately but cooperatively through shared technology and logistics. PTplace presents the user with a choice of individual portal constituents, who are exclusively responsible for fulfilling the exchanges and transactions. This kind of portal is a “pass-through portal.” The initiative is focused only on North America, seeking to avoid the legal, technological, and logistical complexities of broader international operations.

“We’re not dot-com, pie-in-thesky people,” Louis emphasizes. The company provides the fundamentals for its founders four companies sharing expenses, improving efficiency, and maximizing capacity utilization.

CoLinx has three consituencies:
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Manufacturers. The manufacturers who seek the lowest cost Web solutions while maintaining individual control and brand identity. Industrial distributors. CoLinx’s foundation is in enabling distributors to do business with multiple manufacturers through one site, allowing them to respond quickly to their own customers. The founding manufacturers go to market through an open distribution network. Each manufacturer can authorize multiple distributors, and each distributor can represent multiple manufacturers. Employee groups. CoLinx’s strong, mission-driven team is dedicated to using the Web site to build the businesses of the Manufacturers.

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CoLinx is clear about its mission and about what it does not include.
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PTplace is NOT an exchange or an e-marketplace. CoLinx, as distinct from the participating manufacturers, does NOT perform transactions.
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©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

CoLinx Case Study Company Profile

CoLinx is clear about its mission and about what it does not include.
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CoLinx does NOT sell directly to distributors or any other customer-only the manufacturers do. CoLinx does NOT conduct transactions with the distributors’ customers.

PTplace is NOT an exchange or an e-marketplace. CoLinx, as distinct from the participating manufacturers, does NOT perform transactions. CoLinx does NOT sell directly to distributors or any other customeronly the manufacturers do. CoLinx does NOT conduct transactions with the distributors’ customers.

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“We’re not dot-com, pie-in-the-sky people, Louis emphasizes. The company ” provides the fundamentals for its founders-four companies sharing expenses, improving efficiency, and maximizing capacity utilization. Each founder is an independent entity, maintaining control over its own customer relationships and its own brand. CoLinx leadership, headed by Louis, is open to new premium brand manufacturers that would be able add breadth to CoLinx’s offerings and increase the efficiency of operations. CoLinx will add those manufacturers “who are good for CoLinx and good for the manufacturers’ customers. ”

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Anti-Trust Policy
Each founder is an independent entity, maintaining control over its own customer relationships and its own brand.

CoLinx and the founding manufacturers are committed to adhering to both the letter and the spirit of the anti-trust laws. Accordingly, they engaged anti-trust counsel at the outset of the negotiations and have crafted a business model and strategy and operational guidelines to ensure compliance with those laws.

Benefits for Manufacturers
Each of the founders agreed that the ultimate goal was advancing their separate, individual business interests. Key to achieving this goal is maintaining individual control and preserving each company’s brand identity at the lowest cost.

Marketing
A shopping mall enhances the visibility of the stores it houses. The sheer amount of traffic passing by each storefront benefits each storeowner. Further, a mall environment provides the convenience of a single shopping environment with a broad range of complementary products and services.
CoLinx offers advantages that vividly mirror those offered at a shopping mall.

CoLinx offers advantages that vividly mirror those offered at a shopping mall. The manufacturers will gain a marked increase in exposure to a considerably wider array of distributors. Distributors will benefit from a diverse, though connected, assortment of products and services more vast and more convenient than they could access via individual sites.

Capacity Utilization: Reining in Expense
The founders are looking at this venture in traditional return on investment (ROI) and capacity utilization terms. While the founders each had their own reasons for deciding to engage in e-commerce, each shared a discomfort regarding the level of investment such undertakings require. By buying in to CoLinx, the founders are able to acquire all the e-commerce functionality they need for what CoLinx describes as about a quarter the price of doing it themselves. The members expect to gain substantial ROI and avoid costs they would have otherwise incurred through the efficiencies of having small teams of fully utilized staff associates handling only those tasks that can’t be shared.

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©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

CoLinx Case Study Company Profile

The members expect to gain substantial ROI and avoid costs they would have otherwise incurred through the efficiencies of having small teams of fully utilized staff associates handling only those tasks that can’t be shared.

The founders’ manufacturing heritage strongly influenced their outlook on taking advantage of BroadVision’s functionality through participation with CoLinx. As Louis explains, “Our common manufacturing heritage means that capacity utilization is dear to us-including capacity utilization of BroadVision through PTplace. It’s too expensive for everyone to invest and not use it to its full capacity. ”

Individual Control of the Customer Relationship
By leaving core functions under the domain of the manufacturers, CoLinx preserves the manufacturers’ control of their customer relationship.

The founders are intent upon improving their relationships with their distributor customers and ensuring that each manufacturer retains control over its relationships. With that in mind, CoLinx is rigorous in ensuring that PTplace avoids the characteristics of an exchange. CoLinx completely preserves the manufacturers’ relationships with their customers (i.e., their distributors). CoLinx enables this kind of individual control in large part through its approach toward infrastructure and integration. While the BroadVision software handles the Web site interface and the personalization functionality, the manufacturers’ individual proprietary systems hold all sensitive data. In fact, CoLinx maintains no order information except a log of orders placed through PTplace. Each manufacturer is responsible for what is presented to the customer, dynamic pricing, invoicing, and managing distributors; by leaving these core functions under the domain of the manufacturers, CoLinx preserves each manufacturer’s control of its customer relationships. Further, access to each manufacturer’s information through the Web site requires user-specific passwords. Each manufacturer can tailor the information displayed to each customer and can protect the confidentiality of its information from unauthorized users, including other manufacturers.

Logistics
The company will provide shared logistics functions among the members. The use of the CoLinx logistics functions (to replace or combine with each manufacturer’s own functions) is voluntary. Doing so is complicated and will likely take as much as two years to implement. CoLinx president Louis notes that sharing logistics functions increases efficiency and accuracy, enabling service to distributor branches in just 24 hours 93% of the time. “We would never jeopardize their relationships with their customers, which, when you get right down to it, means delivering on time, consistently, he said. ” Once a sale is made, the manufacturer is responsible for integrating the information. Information flows from PTplace to each legacy system, and from there to the logistics systems. CoLinx is able to facilitate consolidated, and thus more frequent, shipping. Manufacturers look to other companies to add weight to their shipments, particularly common kinds of products being shipped to common destinations. Within the CoLinx framework, trucks will be able to ship mixed pallets, with each manufacturer providing its own packing list.

©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

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CoLinx Case Study Company Profile

By working with CoLinx, distributors can reduce the number of sites they need to access for serving their customers.

Because of the 24-hour delivery made possible by taking maximum advantage of the weight pool, manufacturers can optimize inventory investments—an advantage the entire supply chain can benefit from.

Benefits for Distributors
By working with CoLinx, distributors can reduce the number of sites they need to access for serving their customers. With four major manufacturers on one Web site, distributors can quickly check for parts and thus improve their responsiveness to their customers. They can train on the system, and remember just one password, to access all of the 150,000 products offered through PTplace using a single sign-on. By simplifying the learning curve for adjusting to conducting commerce online, CoLinx is strengthening the ties between distributors and their customers and between distributors and their suppliers.

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©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

CoLinx Case Study Project Description

Project Description
Background
CoLinx inherited the BroadVision platform directly from Rockwell Automation, one of its founders. Early in 1999, Don H. Davis, the chairman and chief executive officer of Rockwell International, focused on what his company should or should not be doing regarding e-commerce activities.
The development of PTplace followed a highly iterative process, with considerable input from distributors during all phases: discovery, scoping, development, test, and launch.

Davis viewed the Internet as a growth opportunity and wanted Rockwell to take full advantage of it. He commissioned a number of teams within Rockwell to study how the company could take maximum advantage of e-commerce. The teams came up with hundreds of potential e-business initiatives, ranging from on-line training to electronic filing of expense reports. Earlier that year, an e-commerce platform study resulted in the selection of BroadVision as the enabler of Rockwell’s e-commerce strategy. In BroadVision’s favor, explains Louis, was its one-to-one personalization and proven scaleability. Its flexibility meant that it was able to serve all businesses of Rockwell, which had different requirements and goals. In November 1999, Don Louis was tapped to lead the e-commerce initiative for Rockwell Automation Power Systems. PTplace was the fruit of this effort, with Louis-as Director of E-Commerce, heading what was, initially, a division of one.

PTplace re-launched in April 2001, with each of the CoLinx founders displaying a unique storefront that brings users to all products, services, and other information that the company chooses to offer.

PTplace was launched just six months later, at the end of April 2000. Its development followed a highly iterative process, with considerable input from distributors during all phases: discovery, scoping, development, test, and launch. For the e-commerce initiative to achieve what the company desired, CoLinx management realized that PTplace operations had to be physically separate from Rockwell Automation. They moved PTplace operations to a location a mile down the road from Rockwell Automation Power Systems headquarters to ensure that the start-up would take on its own culture. “To do what we’d done between November and April took a lot of 15-hour days, ” notes Louis—a commitment that is hard to sustain within any organization. The site had yielded over $60 million in sales by the next January (in only nine months) by offering Rockwell Automation distributors a simpler, speedier, and more cost-efficient method of transacting business. Following that success, PTplace re-launched in April 2001, with each of the CoLinx founders displaying a unique storefront that brings users to all products, services, and other information that the company chooses to offer.

Strategic Goals
BroadVision’s personalization functionality is vital to CoLinx’s basic business model. The original selection of BroadVision One-To-One Enterprise by Rockwell Automation was based on performance issues as well. BroadVision’s scaleability, flexibility, and performance meant that Rockwell Automation could use the software throughout its diverse divisions.

©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

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CoLinx Case Study Project Description

Scaleable E-Marketing
BroadVision enables the manufacturers to build and modify their own home pages, so that each can promote its own brand and strengthen its customer relationships.

With BroadVision as the platform for manufacturers to cooperatively, but separately, market their products, each manufacturer can control what it offers and how it displays its offering. BroadVision enables the manufacturers to build and modify their own home pages, so that each can promote its own brand and strengthen its customer relationships. The founders’ ability to offer a single site to a broad set of customers, spanning the relationships established by the four manufacturers, extends each company’s visibility and market reach. Vital to CoLinx’s business model is the ability to add new manufacturers quickly and easily, and thus to further distribute the cost of the technology. Additional manufacturers, like the founders, will pay a fixed fee to be part of CoLinx, and then will pay a share of operating costs each year for continued participation.

CoLinx is able to assure additional participants that they can be up and running on PTplace within 120 days, due to a combination of BroadVision’s flexibility and CoLinx’s efforts to simplify the platform’s business rules and associated training.

Part of the benefit of using BroadVision is that CoLinx is able to assure additional manufacturers that they can be up and running on PTplace within 120 days, due to a combination of BroadVision’s flexibility and CoLinx’s efforts to simplify the platform’s business rules and associated training. In fact, because of the groundwork laid by CoLinx programmers in BroadVision, very little additional coding is necessary for adding manufacturers.

Personalization
The four founders will offer more than 150,000 products on CoLinx’s PTplace (see Figure 3). and they are relying on BroadVision One-to-One Enterprise platform to help their customers find the specific information they need rapidly. Darcy Mauro, CoLinx VP of Marketing, describes the platform’s person8alization capability as a time-saving mechanism for driving targeted product information and advertising based on a customer’s interests. The broad spectrum of manufacturers, products, and information that comprise CoLinx makes BroadVision’s personalization capability especially central. In fact, CoLinx has been able to stick to an extremely aggressive timetable because so much of BroadVision’s functionality is out-of-the-box. BroadVision provides flexible integration into each founder’s legacy system, using information from customers’ registration and account history (including purchase history and customized pricing) to personalize the dynamic content. The BroadVision software ensures that each distributor sees only the pricing for products that his or her company has already negotiated.

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©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

CoLinx Case Study Project Description

Figure 3 The PTplace home page presents content in seven discrete cells, and links users to the manufacturers’ stores.

Personalized Customer Views

Source: CoLinx

“Most of the time, the information people want is on the site; it’s just a matter of educating them on where it is,” Mauro says. “The BroadVision personalization engine allows us to tailor the site to each individual user.”

The personalization engine also controls which news, product information, and ads each customer views. From earlier experience by Rockwell Automation with PTplace, CoLinx has learned that click-rates drop off dramatically after a customer has seen new information three times. Using rules written by CoLinx, the personalization software automatically swaps old information with new information on other products. “Most of the time, the information people want is on the site; it’s just a matter of educating them on where it is, Mauro says. “The BroadVision personal” ization engine allows us to tailor the site to each individual user. ” CoLinx uses only a subset of BroadVision’s features, mainly one-to-one personalization. Louis stresses that the functionality that is used is used ” to its capacity. “What we use, we use all of, he noted.

Consultant/Third-Party Support
Rockwell Automation, and later CoLinx, engaged Cambridge Technology Partners (CTP) for requirements gathering, design, and implementation support. Setting the tone for their partnership, Louis wanted CTP to provide no more than 50% of the implementation team to ensure adequate knowledge transfer. As Louis explains, “We didn’t want CTP to provide us a fish-fry. We wanted them to teach us how to fish. ”
©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc. 9

CoLinx Case Study Project Description

The CTP team leader, Wanda Gielzecki, returned to CoLinx to prepare for the re-launch. She attributes the success of the BroadVision implementation to “really good programmers” and to a very tight design going into the project.
“I have found that most people are either really strong technically but don’t know anything about deriving business benefits, or vice versa. What distinguishes CoLinx is how the project was able to bring out the best of both and bring them together.

Working closely with CTP, Louis and his team had a very clear idea about what the site would do before the implementers got to work with the nuts and bolts of the project. “I have found that most people are either really strong technically but don’t know anything about deriving business benefits, or vice versa, Gielzecki ” explains. “What distinguishes CoLinx is how the project was able to bring out the best of both, resulting in a site that functions well from both the technical and business viewpoints. ”

– Wanda Gielzecki, Senior Technology Spacialist from Cabridge Technology Partners, consultants for the Broadvision implementation

Integration
BroadVision is running on a Sybase database, which Rockwell Automation selected around 1993. CoLinx has made a point of maintaining this infrastructure rather than creating dual databases. “We’re not building any new databases for data that exist. We don’t need a new depository of informationit’s already out there, Louis notes. ”

Maintaining Control of Customer Relationship
CoLinx has put individual BroadVision Command Centers, the tool for personalization and business rules into the hands of the individual manufacturers, so that each can take one-to-one personalization and dynamic content to the level it wants. Each manufacturer will therefore be responsible for running its own Command Center, and thereby its own customer views through personalization. Giving each participating company complete control of its home page offers considerable capacity for them to build their brands. It does require, however, a training effort.

Business Rules and Training
To enable the four founders to control their own command centers and manage the personalization, as well as to ease the integration of additional manufacturers in the future, CoLinx has confronted the complexities of understanding and writing business rules head-on. The tricky part of writing business rules, such as which customers to target, why to target them, and how BroadVision facilitates, is “linking up a strong business side and a strong technical side, Gielzecki explains. ” To bridge the gaps, CoLinx marketing specialist, Robert Boyce, is writing a step-by-step Command Center training manual intended to enable the least experienced user to manage the content and customer information (see Figure 4). The manual covers all of the basics, but goes into great detail on:
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The purpose of each cell (there are seven dynamic cells for each page) Default content Default rules

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©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

CoLinx Case Study Project Description

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Changing content Creating new content Creating links

Figure 4 The CoLinx Command Center training manual guides users through the steps of managing content and customer information and writing business rules.

Source: CoLinx

Mauro emphasizes that timing is critical to the success of Command Center training: “We [at CoLinx] got trained on Command Center too far in advance, so that by the time we went to implement we needed to be re-trained. ” Learning from this experience, Mauro notes that CoLinx trained the manufacturers and helped them to add their content in mid-March-just a month and a half before the April 30 re-launch. CoLinx approached training in this way to enable supplemental manufacturers to be integrated into PTplace within 120 days, as well as to ensure that knowledge is transferred from the CoLinx technical personnel to the manufacturers.

Look and Feel
The CoLinx manufacturers will display seven discrete cells on their home pages. For the manufacturers, each cell is an opportunity to connect with their customers. Because each manufacturer is committed to preserving its unique brand, each presents a unique look and feel on its home page and takes its own approach toward selecting and displaying content within the cells (see Figure 5). BroadVision One-to-One Enterprise, allows the first cell on the page to welcome the customer by first name. The remaining six cells present editorial content (e.g, FAQs, news, press releases, and links to other sites—

©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

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CoLinx Case Study Project Description

Regarding overall look and feel, CoLinx was able to learn from Rockwell Automation that its customers are far more interested in speed than bells and whistles, especially since many of its users do not yet have high-speed Internet connections.

opened in a new window—for dimension sheets, part information, etc.), contacts, order status information, and advertising. At each manufacturer’s discretion, some cells can be pre-populated with default content. Each manufacturer’s legacy system supplies the data for order status and other customer-specific information, while the BroadVision Command Center controls the dynamic content that populates the contacts and the advertising. For instance, each manufacturer enables ideas for ads to be generated by the number of clicks on a particular FAQ. Regarding overall look and feel, CoLinx was able to learn from Rockwell Automation that its customers are far more interested in speed than bells and whistles, especially since many of its users do not yet have high-speed Internet connections.

Figure 5 SKF’s home page, or storefront, demonstrates the manufacturer’s approach to selecting and presenting content.

Up-front, frequently used dynamic content

Source: CoLinx

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©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

CoLinx Case Study Project Description

Observation Reports and Analytics
The BroadVision software, via Crystal Reports, provides each manufacturer observation reports that tally data relating to its section of the Web site according to a number of metrics:
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Who entered the Web site, and when How long did each user stay What did they buy

CoLinx manufacturers can use these observations as the basis for dynamically changing the home page. BroadVision supplies 12 reports, though CoLinx developed in-house some additional reports that pull data from the software to augment the analytics. CoLinx tracks everything from the number of parts offered on line to the number of log-ons and price checks per week (see Figure 6).

Figure 6 This selection of Web statistics for 2000 is a sample of the data CoLinx tallies.

Web Statistics for 2000
Bookings Registered Companies Registered Users Active Profiles 3 Log-on's Per Week Stock/Price Checks Order Checks Parts Listed On-line Reduction in Call Center Volume Customers Who Tested the Site Employees Who Tested the Site
2 1

$59M 1,000 5,300 2,243 6,000 3,700 2,600 99,546 30% 33 275

1 2 3

Customer locations that are signed up for the site. People at registered companies who have signed up for the site. Users who have logged on in the last 90 days.

Source: CoLinx

©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

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CoLinx Case Study Project Description

Conclusion
Via BroadVision One-to-One Enterprise, CoLinx is giving the shopping mall business model a high-tech twist. CoLinx is able to offer manufacturers a robust vehicle for marketing their products to a broader array of customers, while offering distributors a simpler mechanism for finding the products they need for their customers. Within their cooperative framework, each participating CoLinx manufacturer can:
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Enhance its visibility through a scaleable e-marketing platform Help its customers find the information and the products they need through BroadVision’s personalization capability Maintain individual control of its customer relationships by keeping all sensitive data, including order information, on its own legacy systems Protect the confidentiality of its information through password protection Distribute the costs and the complexity of a world-class e-commerce platform across all participating manufacturers

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©2001 Benchmarking Partners™ / Surgency™, Inc.

Surgency, Inc. One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142 USA T: 617-225-7800 F: 617-225-7809 e-mail: info@surgency.com www.surgency.com

BroadVision 585 Broadway Redwood City, CA 94063 USA 650-261-5100 e-mail: info@broadvision.com www.broadvision.com
Part No. 20313.0501

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