Chop and choose, on the Net
By Usha Somayaji | 24 Mar 2000
1
Imagine walking into a car showroom that stocks every perceivable choice of models and combinations. Where you can pick and choose every feature, colour, power, speed, upholstery, mileage, dashboard contents, extras, even mix and match different features from different models. View it from different angles, inside and outside. And having decided on the car of your choice and obtained a price, take your pick of the financing options available, and finally even decide which dealer will deliver the car!
Unthinkable? Not really, if you decide to shop on the Net, and the whole experience of picking and choosing is as close as it can be to real-life shopping.
And as more and more businesses decide to sell their ware on the Net, it becomes important that companies replicate the shopping experience and make it as easy and user-friendly an activity as possible. This involves offering the customer a multiple choice of combinations, and even gently guiding him through the shopping experience, just as a salesman would in a shop. It becomes increasingly necessary to have a tool that offers all the permutations and combinations of options that are possible with each product or service.
Pune-based Selectica Configurators India P Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of San Jose-based Selectica Inc., is among a few in the world who create these tools -- configurator engines or Internet selling systems. With these engines, a company is able to 'display' its ware on the Net with its full complement of permutations and combinations, and a customer from anywhere across the globe can pick and choose, mix and match, and decide his own set of options -- of product, of payment, of delivery.
Thus BMW uses the Selectica configurator to sell its cars, Samsung and Hewlett Packard for computers, Fujitsu Networking Systems, 3Com, Cisco, and south Western Bell, for networking. What Selectica does is enable the likes of BMW, Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu, DELL, Samsung and others to sell their products over the web, allowing their customers to directly look up products that meet their needs.
"What occurs is an 'if-then-else' procedure, a process of thinking exactly like an expert: in a particular situation, how would an expert behave? If a condition is modified, what are the options? With all the choices you have before you, what is the most suitable plan of action?" explains S.S. Sundararajan, vice president, Selectica, Indian operations.
Configuration technology is a set of rules placed onto a database, which empowers the user to access the relevant, context-based information. "It is like the brain presiding over the body, which says what, when, how, and why to act on a particular information. It captures the mental process and puts it on the computer, so the computer behaves like an expert," says Sundararajan. "It is this case-based reasoning, simulating the neural network, that is at the root of a configurator engine."
Which is why configuration technology is put to use across segments, products and services, and not necessarily always for selling. Germany-based Fireman's Fund uses it for risk assessment across industries, while Loan Marketing Research, to bring borrowers and lenders on a common platform and lend and borrow money.
In its task of assessing industry against collapse, Fireman's Fund has to take numerous parameters into account -- the business the company is in, the kind of staffing it has, its growth pattern, besides a hundred other risk assessment factors -- to decide on the premium. This it has to do with industries located across the globe, for which it has to train hundreds of thousands of assessors to conduct risk assessment objectively. Selectica's configurators have made it possible to have standardised risk assessment.
Selectica has created a similar engine for Loan Market Research, a platform for borrowers and lenders. It brings them together on the basis of the amount of loan sought, the period for which it is required, the acceptable interest rate, the credit-worthiness of the borrower, the documentary support that can be produced, et al.
As an Internet selling system, the configurator actually ends up cutting down the intermediary -- the dealer, the salesman, the distributor. It also brings the full range of products and services to the customer's desktop, anywhere on the globe, with the configurator engine located and managed at a single location. Apart from the speed with which these can be carried out, the other advantage is that upgrades and version changes can reach the most distant user, instantaneously.
Selectica Inc, begun by two NRIs, Sanjay Mittal and Raj Jaswa, in 1998 in San Jose, got listed on March 10, 2000 on the Nasdaq, quoting at $141 on the very first day of listing. (As of March 16 the price levelled down to $102). The company has venture funding from the likes of Draper International, Draper Fisher, Zilka International, and Intel.
Selectica Inc made a turnover of $3.44 million by March 1999, and notched up $9.18 million by December 1999. It seems set to quadruple its earnings at the close of this fiscal. Undoubtedly, the compulsions of an emerging web-centric regime across businesses spells good news for a company like Selectica.
The Pune unit of Selectica, the largest operations centre outside the US (there are offices in London, Germany and Toronto), is on an expansion mode, with its current employee strength of 130 set to swell to 300 by the close of calendar 2000. An engineering centre is due to be opened at Chennai towards the end of this month.
The company has been operating in three segments -- consumer products, financial and insurance services, and networking. Now it plans to foray into new segments -- industrial products and healthcare. "The possibilities are endless. These configurators, for instance, would lend themselves very well to homeopathy," says Sundararajan, "with their ability to deal with the complex combinations of symptoms and diagnosis."
He believes that all aspects of healthcare (outside the domain of actual prescription) could be offered as configured packages. "Getting a lowdown on the person's constitution, specific problems, suggesting an appropriate lifestyle, food supplementary or exercise regimen, everything short of prescribing, can be done on the Net."
In the industrial products segment, the company is set to begin configuring control valves for Cooper Cameron. "Industrial products have complex configurations, and take up time marketing and training new users. With the product configured on the Net, all information and updates can be provided over the web. This will cut down both marketing and training time. Besides, when products get upgraded, the new configurations can be reached across to the most remote of customers almost instantly," says Sundararajan.
As he would like to put it, "The configurator engine works like a laser -- cutting precisely and efficiently, as opposed to the blood and waste of a butcher's knife."
Unthinkable? Not really, if you decide to shop on the Net, and the whole experience of picking and choosing is as close as it can be to real-life shopping.
And as more and more businesses decide to sell their ware on the Net, it becomes important that companies replicate the shopping experience and make it as easy and user-friendly an activity as possible. This involves offering the customer a multiple choice of combinations, and even gently guiding him through the shopping experience, just as a salesman would in a shop. It becomes increasingly necessary to have a tool that offers all the permutations and combinations of options that are possible with each product or service.
Pune-based Selectica Configurators India P Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of San Jose-based Selectica Inc., is among a few in the world who create these tools -- configurator engines or Internet selling systems. With these engines, a company is able to 'display' its ware on the Net with its full complement of permutations and combinations, and a customer from anywhere across the globe can pick and choose, mix and match, and decide his own set of options -- of product, of payment, of delivery.
Thus BMW uses the Selectica configurator to sell its cars, Samsung and Hewlett Packard for computers, Fujitsu Networking Systems, 3Com, Cisco, and south Western Bell, for networking. What Selectica does is enable the likes of BMW, Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu, DELL, Samsung and others to sell their products over the web, allowing their customers to directly look up products that meet their needs.
"What occurs is an 'if-then-else' procedure, a process of thinking exactly like an expert: in a particular situation, how would an expert behave? If a condition is modified, what are the options? With all the choices you have before you, what is the most suitable plan of action?" explains S.S. Sundararajan, vice president, Selectica, Indian operations.
Configuration technology is a set of rules placed onto a database, which empowers the user to access the relevant, context-based information. "It is like the brain presiding over the body, which says what, when, how, and why to act on a particular information. It captures the mental process and puts it on the computer, so the computer behaves like an expert," says Sundararajan. "It is this case-based reasoning, simulating the neural network, that is at the root of a configurator engine."
Which is why configuration technology is put to use across segments, products and services, and not necessarily always for selling. Germany-based Fireman's Fund uses it for risk assessment across industries, while Loan Marketing Research, to bring borrowers and lenders on a common platform and lend and borrow money.
In its task of assessing industry against collapse, Fireman's Fund has to take numerous parameters into account -- the business the company is in, the kind of staffing it has, its growth pattern, besides a hundred other risk assessment factors -- to decide on the premium. This it has to do with industries located across the globe, for which it has to train hundreds of thousands of assessors to conduct risk assessment objectively. Selectica's configurators have made it possible to have standardised risk assessment.
Selectica has created a similar engine for Loan Market Research, a platform for borrowers and lenders. It brings them together on the basis of the amount of loan sought, the period for which it is required, the acceptable interest rate, the credit-worthiness of the borrower, the documentary support that can be produced, et al.
As an Internet selling system, the configurator actually ends up cutting down the intermediary -- the dealer, the salesman, the distributor. It also brings the full range of products and services to the customer's desktop, anywhere on the globe, with the configurator engine located and managed at a single location. Apart from the speed with which these can be carried out, the other advantage is that upgrades and version changes can reach the most distant user, instantaneously.
Selectica Inc, begun by two NRIs, Sanjay Mittal and Raj Jaswa, in 1998 in San Jose, got listed on March 10, 2000 on the Nasdaq, quoting at $141 on the very first day of listing. (As of March 16 the price levelled down to $102). The company has venture funding from the likes of Draper International, Draper Fisher, Zilka International, and Intel.
Selectica Inc made a turnover of $3.44 million by March 1999, and notched up $9.18 million by December 1999. It seems set to quadruple its earnings at the close of this fiscal. Undoubtedly, the compulsions of an emerging web-centric regime across businesses spells good news for a company like Selectica.
The Pune unit of Selectica, the largest operations centre outside the US (there are offices in London, Germany and Toronto), is on an expansion mode, with its current employee strength of 130 set to swell to 300 by the close of calendar 2000. An engineering centre is due to be opened at Chennai towards the end of this month.
The company has been operating in three segments -- consumer products, financial and insurance services, and networking. Now it plans to foray into new segments -- industrial products and healthcare. "The possibilities are endless. These configurators, for instance, would lend themselves very well to homeopathy," says Sundararajan, "with their ability to deal with the complex combinations of symptoms and diagnosis."
He believes that all aspects of healthcare (outside the domain of actual prescription) could be offered as configured packages. "Getting a lowdown on the person's constitution, specific problems, suggesting an appropriate lifestyle, food supplementary or exercise regimen, everything short of prescribing, can be done on the Net."
In the industrial products segment, the company is set to begin configuring control valves for Cooper Cameron. "Industrial products have complex configurations, and take up time marketing and training new users. With the product configured on the Net, all information and updates can be provided over the web. This will cut down both marketing and training time. Besides, when products get upgraded, the new configurations can be reached across to the most remote of customers almost instantly," says Sundararajan.
As he would like to put it, "The configurator engine works like a laser -- cutting precisely and efficiently, as opposed to the blood and waste of a butcher's knife."
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