Pipeline Publishing, Volume 7, Issue 2

	This Month's Issue:
	Personalization

Delivering Customer-Personalization through Intelligent Applications

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And, most impactful, is intelligence driving the process uses events in selling and fulfillment process to automatically trigger decisions, or even to modify the process flow itself. For instance, intelligent applications support driving the offer qualification and presentation process by automatically determining the best offer to present to the customer. This includes selecting promotions and terms, based on the customer’s profile including billing and payment history and customer longevity. This can be done when a user (either in the call center, retail site, or on the web) browses for available offers. Many other scenarios improve decision-making at critical points in the business process.

Another example is applying intelligence to drive an order fulfillment process. A typical scenario where intelligent application capability can be applied is in the case of inventory stock-outs. If an equipment order is

Front-line employees can be empowered to make consistently better decisions by providing them with relevant metrics available to them at the appropriate time.

selling, ordering, fulfillment, and servicing processes, CSPs can change the way they do business by responding faster to fluid customer demands and enhancing every customer interaction through automated decision making that utilizes the latest available customer data and key performance indicators for customer personalization. Some of the many business benefits CSPs can gain from embracing customer personalization include:

Increase loyalty by presenting offers and support plans based on specific customer requirements.

Click on the diagram to view a larger image.

Automatically reallocate constrained inventory to a customer based on personalization priorities,
such as customer types, behavioral score, etc.

being fulfilled and the inventory needed to fulfill it from internal stock is not available, embedded analytics analyzes the order details and customer history to determine if the order should be placed into special handling since the order value is high and the customer has a long-standing relationship with the CSP. Thus, a personalized fulfillment plan can automatically be generated that fulfills the equipment through an external vendor (a more expensive fulfillment option) in order to keep the customer commitment and maintain the highly-valued customer relationship.

Intelligent applications enable revenue-enhancing personalization programs
By leveraging embedded business intelligence and analytics along with automated decision-making capability, CSPs can employ customer-personalization-based business programs and processes. As a result, with intelligent applications capability embedded in their

Boost conversions by making “out-of-stock” recommendations or alternative fulfillment plans.

Drive repeat business through targeted promotions or save plans based on customer history and preferences.

Increase order size with personalized cross-sell and up-sell recommendations.

The Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite takes advantage of intelligent application capabilities by embedding intelligent application technology directly into offer management, selling, ordering, and fulfillment process support offered by our software solutions. By bringing a new intelligent application capability to the Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite, we enrich our solutions by enhancing process flows with embedded analytics and enable CSPs to create revenue-enhancing customer-personalization programs.

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About Sterling Commerce
Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) company, helps companies optimize and transform their Business Collaboration Network quickly, easily and securely so they can accelerate revenues, reduce costs and protect their enterprise. Sterling Commerce provides more than 18,000 customers worldwide with applications and integration solutions to improve the way they connect, communicate and collaborate with their customers, partners and suppliers.
Sterling Commerce applications enhance the way companies do business by streamlining the commerce lifecycle from selling to fulfillment for any offer, across any channel, from any source. Sterling Commerce integration solutions connect people, processes and technologies inside and outside an enterprise, enabling the seamless integration of key business processes between any partner, any system, anywhere.

For more information about how communications leaders are profiting from personalization visit www.profitable-selling.com.

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