PRESS RELEASES
Mercado bSMART™ Named One of the Top Trend Setting Products of 2006 by KMWorld Magazine
Mercado recognized as a leader for business-to-business e-commerce search, navigation and active-selling
PLEASANTON, CA, August 29, 2006 - Mercado Software, the leading provider of e-commerce search & merchandising solutions, today announced that Mercado bSMART has been designated as a KMWorld Trend Setting Product of 2006. Built on Mercado's proven and industry-recognized Commerce Search & Navigation (CSN) platform, Mercado bSMART provides an easy to use online sourcing environment for employee purchasers and business partners through intuitive online catalog navigation and targeted product search.
"Assembling the list of Trend-Setting Products of 2006 is a year-long collaborative effort with editorial colleagues and analysts and, especially, users," says Hugh McKellar, KMWorld editor in chief. "Out of the roughly 1,500 products from some 300 vendors that were considered, we selected Mercado bSMART because it demonstrated exquisite customer execution."
Launched in November 2005, Mercado bSMART provides online businesses with accurate product search and catalog navigation – enabling their customers and partner network, through an intuitive sourcing environment, to easily locate and purchase the products that best suit their needs. Mercado bSMART introduced enhanced Commerce Management features including the ability to create custom catalogs for the power buyer who knows specifically what he or she is looking for and buys it repeatedly – in accordance with company contracts, and/or with his or her specific role within the company.
Mercado bSMART was recently chosen by real estate procurement specialist SiteStuff, Inc. to drive sales on their e-commerce website. Mercado bSMART's Active-Selling features enable SiteStuff to improve their conversion rates and increase order sizes with sophisticated merchandising technologies that – in response to a search query – display associated products and peripherals, as well as provide alternative items as appropriate.
"We selected Mercado for two reasons," stated Brad Chandler, Director of Product Management for SiteStuff.com. "First, Mercado bSMART met our requirements better than any other solution, and second, Mercado demonstrated that they could offer a real partnership. Mercado has committed to be there for us beyond deployment, and to be responsive to our needs going forward."
Mercado bSMART Advantages
Just as merchandising professionals in retail e-commerce take every opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell on their consumer-facing sites, Mercado bSMART enables a B2B organization to actively sell online by converting their web storefront into a marketing dynamo. Online vendors report that they can now make their catalog do much more selling than they had thought possible. Mercado bSMART's underlying catalog data structure allows them to augment raw catalog data with relationships defined by concepts like "complementary", "substitution", or "replacement". By infusing catalogs with these product relationships, they can optimize selling opportunities through catalog search & navigation.
Mercado also solves the issue of the unique and inconsistent terminology, descriptions and conventions used by vendors & suppliers. By attacking this challenge at the product classification/attribute level, Mercado bSMART creates a 'homogenized' environment that delivers maximum consistency.
Mercado's native Web Services architecture is ideally suited for B2B e-commerce because it was designed to easily integrate with most common backend commerce platforms. Mercado's powerful XML indexing process and support for any business format ensures that online catalogs stay current and accurately reflect inventory levels.
"In addition to enabling business-to-business clients to utilize the effective active-selling and merchandising strategies used by major retailers, Mercado bSMART provides business buyers with the accurate and detailed product information that they need to make smart and accurate corporate purchases," said Corey Leibow, President & CEO of Mercado. "We are very proud that our customers and KMWorld have recognized the advantages of Mercado bSMART to truly deliver the goods."
About Mercado Software
Mercado is the leading e-commerce search & merchandising solution specialist for multi-channel retail and B2B organizations. By enabling a superior buying experience and equipping business managers with a powerful platform on which to execute merchandising strategies, online businesses can aggressively grow revenue and foster customer loyalty. Sears, Williams-Sonoma, JCPenney, Macy's, Target, Organize.com, MSN Shopping, Caterpillar and OfficeMax, are some of the companies benefiting from Mercado's solutions. For more information about Mercado Software, please visit www.mercado.com or call (888) 376-1400.
About KMWorld
The leading information provider serving the knowledge management systems market, KMWorld covers the latest in Content, Document and Knowledge Management and informs more than 51,000 subscribers about the components and processes - and subsequent success stories - that together offer solutions for improving business performance.
Media Contact:
Mark Shapiro
858-573-0736
mshapiro@davismarrin.com
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