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Shop at Zobrist Store
Overview
The vast numbers of small and
medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Southern California represent huge
sales opportunities for Zobrist Consulting Group, Inc. The Van Nuys,
California-based computer consultancy of 20 employees specializes in
building Internet applications for entrepreneurs running
business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) Web sites in
industries as diverse as retail, insurance, distribution and
manufacturing.
Business need:
HTML-based
content creation impeded communication with clients on projects, slowed
sales and made it difficult for customers to quickly update commercial
Web sites with the latest product offerings
Solution:
IBM®
Workplace Web Content Management™ software helps speed collaboration
and content creation and integrates with IBM WebSphere® Portal and IBM
WebSphere Commerce software to comprise a complete portal and Web site
development solution
Benefits:
IBM Workplace Web Content Management helped to reduce average project time by half, resulting in more rapid billings; using an internal Workplace Web Content Management site as a sales tool helped Zobrist increase closed sales by 80 percent; the combined capabilities of Workplace Web Content Management, WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Commerce helped make firm clients more nimble in the marketplace
Key Components
Software
• IBM Workplace Web Content Management
• IBM WebSphere Portal
• IBM WebSphere Commerce
• IBM Lotus QuickPlace
• IBM DB2
• Linux
Servers
• IBM System x
The vast numbers of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Southern California represent huge sales opportunities for Zobrist Consulting Group, Inc. The Van Nuys, California-based computer consultancy of 20 employees specializes in building Internet applications for entrepreneurs running business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) Web sites in industries as diverse as retail, insurance, distribution and manufacturing.
Regardless of industry or specialty, these companies share many of the same requirements, says firm president Teresa Zobrist. “Our customers have tight budgets, and everything they purchase is based on the ability to generate more income as quickly as possible,” Zobrist says. “If we are unable to meet these needs, we risk losing potential and existing customers.”
Yet the complexity of communicating project status frequently slowed engagements and made it difficult to bill for work performed. “The faster we can provide our services, the faster we can close invoices,” explains Zobrist. “But ad hoc communications on the phone or by e-mail can confuse matters. We needed a way to track and act upon customer communications.”
Zobrist says the need to know HTML to update commercial Web sites also interfered with sales. “Not everyone knows HTML, and the people within customer organizations who know the most about the products and services that need to be added to a site are usually nontechnical people in marketing and sales,” she says. “Finding a product that would allow these professionals to meet market demand by updating product information without relying on IT staff seemed likely to increase our sales.”
New content management approach ups productivity
Any tool chosen to speed communication with customers—as well as increase client Web capabilities—would need to work with existing tools the firm uses to create full-feature commercial Web sites. “We have always used IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM WebSphere Commerce to create specialized e-commerce portals, because these tools will integrate with any major database or operating system,” Zobrist says. “We needed a way to make these solutions more accessible to more people.”
The recent release of IBM Workplace Web Content Management V6 provided the answer, Zobrist says. “Regardless of size, Workplace Web Content Management gives our clients the ability to create and publish Web content because users do not need to use HTML for authoring, searching and administration,” Zobrist notes. “Additionally, Workplace Web Content Management works seamlessly with other WebSphere products, so we can quickly provide a total solution for our customers.”
Workplace Web Content Management helps the firm reduce costs without sacrificing capabilities, Zobrist says. “Features such as standardized templates for workflow, content creation and defining user access roles lower our costs,” she says. “And full compatibility with other WebSphere products allows us to provide our services in any IT environment, regardless of system or hardware.”
Compatibility with tools such as WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Commerce also makes firm consultants more productive, Zobrist says. “Our consultants are now often able to build sites in half as much time as before we adopted Workplace Web Content Management,” she notes. “For example, we now typically design a client intranet in three weeks—the same type of project used to take six weeks.”
Workplace Web Content Management–enabled portals help the firm hold onto customers
Installation of Workplace Web Content Management began with the firm’s in-house IT infrastructure to speed communication with clients. Powered by IBM System x™ servers running the Microsoft® Windows® and Linux® operating systems along with an IBM DB2® database, implementation was fast and nondisruptive. “It took us under a week to get up and running with the solution,” Zobrist says.
With the solution installed, consultants at the firm used IBM WebSphere Portal to create three separate portals that were designed to increase customer satisfaction, increase sales and speed projects.
To track phone calls and e-mails—and reduce billing time—Zobrist used IBM Lotus® QuickPlace® software to create a self-service workspace expressly designed for team collaboration. “Our QuickPlace destination now provides customers with project and account information—and comments and communications about new developments can be added to the portal without using HTML,” Zobrist says. “Everything from billing to work in progress can be tracked by everyone who is given access, and users simply use the what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) text editor to make comments.”
An alert portal further increases customer satisfaction by allowing customers to quickly contact the firm about the details of any critical issue, whether it be an outage or problem the customer cannot resolve. Additionally, this portal automatically provides IBM software updates to firm clients, which saves the company time in provisioning routine maintenance software needed to run commercial Web sites.
A marketing portal, Zobrist says, has shortened the average sales cycle to existing customers from three months to less than four weeks. “Our clients like to know what is available to help their online efforts. Using WebSphere Commerce, our portal can give each client tailored information about solutions appropriate for their business needs,” she says. “Not only does this kind of targeted up-selling and cross-selling substantially reduce the amount of time customers spend on deciding whether a new product or service is appropriate—it also shows them how WebSphere Commerce can have a positive impact on their own sites.”
Meeting client market opportunities results in return business
Once the firm has completed its work on a project, customers are able to sell more effectively and respond to new opportunities almost immediately. With the WSIWYG editor, product managers, marketing experts and salespeople can create and publish online content without involving IT. Workplace Web Content Management also automates publishing workflow to significantly save time with built-in approval routing.
“Workplace Web Content Management allows marketing people to do what they do best—promote products,” Zobrist says. “The template approach to updating site content means that these professionals do not have to bother with coding, and site changes are much more likely to be based on business decisions.”
Comprehensive role-based features allow customers to set employee publishing access—which can help ensure security and quality. An insurance provider client of the firm, for example, has set roles for over 6,000 users such as agents, claims adjusters, management and policy holders. In this client’s environment, the firm created nearly 100 portlets built for internal and external communications.
Workflow simplification works seamlessly with access roles and gives the firm’s customers more flexibility to respond to market opportunities. As an example, Zobrist mentions a large retailing customer that changes its product lineup according to season—and the content describing these items is created by dozens of contributors throughout the company. At this company, publishing access is fixed according to the appropriate season for each team, which allows the appropriate group to create, revise and update content without fear of intruding on the work of other seasonal teams.
Workplace Web Content Management integration with WebSphere Commerce enables up-selling and cross-selling powered by more intuitive search capabilities. At B2C sites, consumer visitors can be automatically offered products likely to be of interest based on user profiles. And for both B2C and B2B sites, Workplace Web Content Management is completely integrated with the inventory reconciliation capabilities of WebSphere Commerce.
All of these capabilities result in increased customer satisfaction—and return customers for more projects, Zobrist says. “By using Workplace Web Content Management, WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Commerce, SMB customers can maintain Web sites far more effectively,” she observes. “This makes our customers much more likely to turn to us when they need help supporting new initiatives.”
Sales conversion rate rises to 80 percent by demonstrating Workplace Web Content Management features
Zobrist says that the company has increased its sales conversion rate by 80 percent since implementing Workplace Web Content Management. “Seeing is believing—and when we demonstrate what Workplace Web Content Management can do in conjunction with the other WebSphere tools, we usually make the sale,” she says.
This demonstration, Zobrist explains, comes in the form of a Workplace Web Content Management–enabled Web site with portal capabilities. Firm consultants show prospects how portals can be built quickly for specific purposes—and then demonstrate how content can be added and deleted on the fly.
Following this demonstration, firm consultants then show how the three customer communication portals work. “It’s a one-two punch that really excites people,” Zobrist says. “Leaders of small companies with very exacting requirements see the potential for their businesses to be more agile—and are relieved to see that our Workplace Web Content Management support structure can facilitate that change.”
Products and services used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Hardware:
Software:
Workplace Web Content Management, Lotus QuickPlace, WebSphere Commerce - Express, WebSphere Portal, DB2 9 for Linux, UNIX and Windows, WebSphere Commerce Portal
Operating system:
Linux, Win 95/98
