- Section 1.6: Intelligent Services
and Products
Personalising Customer Interactions Using
Knowledge Mined from Behavioural Logs
S.S. Anand, M. Baumgarten, K. Bradley, J. Gonzalez-Olalla, N.
Rooney, M. Galushka
Personalised Customer Interaction for
the Configuration of Products and Services in a Supply Chain
R. Schäfer, W. Schütz, X. Ceugniet, J. Mitchener, L.
Ardissono, A. Coy, M. Zunker, D. Jannach, A. Felfernig, R. Simeoni,
R. Gavuzzi
An Architecture for Integrating Virtual
Sales Assistant Technology into E-Business Environments
T. Gurzki
Intelligent Assistance to E-commerce
A. Garcia-Serrano, J.Z. Herndndez, P. Martinez
Understanding How People Use Search Engines:
A Statistical Analysis for e-Business
F. Cacheda, Á. Viña
Certification of Web Access Statistics
F. Bergadano, D. Cavagnino, P.A. Nesta
- The
Challenge of Leverage on e-Interactive Tools for Customer and
Supplier Collaboration
O. Khan
Lean Configuration: Interactive Configuration
for the Internet
I. Fikouras, E. Gisbrecht
Intelligent Product Information Search
in E-Commerce: Retrieval Strategies for Virtual Shop Assistants
M. L'Abhate, U. Thiel
Electronic Payment Systems: Issues of
User Acceptance
D. Abrazhevich
E-Payments: Which Systems in Europe for
the Coming Years?
D. Bounie
Interactive and Real-Time Help-Desk System
in Electronic Shop Environment
K.-O. Detken, U. Kaufmann
eSolutions - Design Principles for Ease-of-Use
S. Wikström, C. Persson, B. Lennstrand
CASH - Customer After Sales Help (IST-1999-12061)
J. Sabaziotis
A Real-Time Mechanism for Targeted Dynamic
Personalization
M. Gounaris, V. Skoularidou, K. Tzelepis
An Intelligent Framework for the Calculation
of Discounts in Electronic Shops
J. Homann and M. Halatchev
The Spanish Speaking Countries Electronic
Commerce Market
J. Peire, M. Castro and P. Vallejo
GeoMarkt.NRW - An E-Commerce Platform
for Geospatial Information and Services
R. Gartmann, B. Holtkamp
Extended Products: Observatory of Current
Research and Development Trends
B.E. Hirsch, J. Schumacher, J. Eschenbächer, K. Jansson,
M. Ollus and I. Karvonen
Tourism in the Age of Internet - A Solution
for Destinations
P. Beritelli, M. Müller, B.R. Katzy
E-Tour: Multimedia Mobile Guides to Enhance
Fruition of the Heritage
F. Bellotti, R. Berta, A. De Gloria, A. Gabrieli, M. Margarone
Best Practice in Dynamic Networked Organisation
P. Weiss
Personalising
Customer Interactions Using Knowledge Mined from Behavioural
Logs
Sarabjot S. ANAND(1),
Matthias BAUMGARTEN(2), Kevin BRADLEY(1), Jorge
GONZALEZ-OLALLA(1), Neill ROONEY(2), Mykola GALUSHKA(2)
(1) MINEit Software Ltd, 19-21 Alfred Street, Belfast, Northern
Ireland BT2 8ED
(2) Faculty of Informatics, University of Ulster at Jordanstown,
Northern Ireland BT37 0QB
-
- Most businesses today interact
with their customers through a number of channels. The inevitable
ubiquity of the Internet will only add to the complexities of
the interactions through the proliferation of digital channels.
The true Return on Investment (ROI) associated with the use of
these digital channels will only be realised when businesses
contextualise these channels to make self-service a viable option
for their customers. Businesses that provide their customers
with the right information at the right time and in the right
context will win customer loyalty and hence gain profitability.
We believe that a key component in achieving success is analytics
and the real time deployment of the resulting knowledge. In this
paper we discuss some of the opportunities and challenges which
arise from this business need and present techniques developed
to address it.
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Personalised
Customer Interaction for the Configuration of Products and Services
in a Supply Chain
Ralph SCHAFER(1), Wilken
SCHUTZ(1), Xavier CEUGNIET(2), Jonathan MITCHENER(3), Liliana
ARDISSONO(4), Anna GOY(4), Markus ZANKER(5), Dietmar JANNACH(5),
Alexander FELFERNIG(5), Rossana SIMEONI(6), Roberto GAVAZZI(6)
(1) DFKI GmbH, Saarbrucken, Germany
(2) ILOG, France
(3) British Telecommunications plc, Great Britain
(4) Universita degli Studi diTorino, Italy
(5) Universitat Klagenfurt, Austria
(6) Telecom Italia Lab, Italy
Within CAWICOMS a configuration
workbench for customisable products and services will be developed
which will have the following advantages versus current commercially
available configuration technology: It will automate over the
Web the skills of salespersons by developing adaptation and personalisation
technology for inclusion in Web based configurators. The interaction
with the user will be tailored according to his/her skills and
needs. CAWICOMS will enable integration and collaboration of
distributed Web based configurators, thus supporting suppliers
which use customisable products and services of their sub-suppliers.
The prototype will be demonstrated in two domains: In the configuration
of IP-
VPNs the customer specifies his/her needs regarding a virtual
private network. In another application, telecommunication switches
(including end-user devices) have to be configured. CAWICOMS
will have benefits both for customers (who will be able to better
specify their needs and to select the most appropriate solution)
and for suppliers (who will get support for their co-operation
along the supply chain).
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An
Architecture for Integrating Virtual Sales Assistant Technology
into E-Business Environments
Thorsten Gurzki
Fraunhofer Institut fuer Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation (IAO)
Nobelstr. 12, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
Major challenges of virtual
sales assistant research lie in enhancing the quality of the
customer consulting and in guaranteeing efficient maintenance
of the product data. Current concepts lack of tight and intelligent
integration options into existing business systems (like shop
systems), and they lack of possibilities to reuse existing product
data. The missing of integration concepts decreases the quality
of the dialogue and make most scientific approaches invaluable
for business use. This paper presents a virtual sales assistant
system architecture that meets the challenges of tight backend
system integration.
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Intelligent
Assistance to E-commerce
Ana Garcia-Serrana(1), Josefa Z. Hernandez(1), Palama Martinez(2)
(1) ISYS research group, Technical University of Madrid, Computer
Science Department,
Spain
(2) Department of Computer Science, Carlos III University of
Madrid, Spain
In this contribution we present
the work performed in the ADVICE' project, an on-going European
Commission research project. The overall objective of this project
is to design and implement an advice-giving system for E-commerce,
supporting a move from the current catalogue-based customer services
to a customer adapted intelligent assistance, emulating in some
way the performance of a human seller. With this aim the main
elements of the ADVICE approach include an agent-based architecture
with an Interface Agent to manage the multimedia presentation,
the Interaction Agent to support an advanced user-system interaction
and the Intelligent agent incorporating a knowledge-based model
of the e-business for the pilot domain, that supports the reasoning
for advise-giving according with the user needs and the dialogue
evolution.
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Understanding
How People Use Search Engines: A Statistical Analysis for e-Business
Fidel Cacheda, Angel Vina
Departamento de Tecnoloxius da Informacion e das Comunicacions
Fucultad de Informatica, Universidad de A Coruna
Campus de Elvina s/n, 15071 A CORUNA, SPAIN
In this paper we describe the
analysis realised of the users' behaviour of a Spanish portal
named BIWE (http://www.biwe.es). This portal offers to his users
a high variety of services, although our study was mainly focused
in the search services: a Web directory and a search engine.
During a period of two weeks (from 3 May 2000 to 18 May 2000)
we logged all the accesses realised by the users to the search
services. Next, we realised a statistical study focused mainly
in four points: the categories visited by the users in the Web
directory, the queries asked to the search engine and the Web
pages visited afterwards, and finally a special analysis of the
users' sessions. Through this study we will be able to answer
questions like these: how far will a user browse the categories
of the directory?, how many words does a common query include?,
how complicated are these queries?, how many searches will a
user perform during a session? All these questions (and their
answers) will help us to build a profile of a common Web user
and to have a better knowledge of how Web users behave, which
is fundamental for e-Business.
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Certification
of Web Access Statistics
Francesco BERGADANO, Davide CAVAGNINO and Pasquale Andrea NESTA
Dipartimento di Informatica, Universita di Torino
Corso Svizzera 185, 10149 Torino, Italy
Web usage statistics are presented
internally to company management at different levels, and externally
to customers, investors and partners. Yet, these information
are generally perceived as being unreliable, they are presented
in different non-standard formats, and may be artificially inflated.
Certimeter, developed at the University of Turin, provides a
suite of services offering third party access information, based
on innovative technology that is described in detail in the present
paper.
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The
Challenge of Leverage on e-Interactive Tools for Customer and
Supplier Collaboration
Omar KHAN
TXT e-solutions spa, Salita San Barborino 23r, I-l 6149, Genoa,
Italy
The LIAISE funded project'
aims at producing a commercial tool to aid in the configuration
and quotation of complex highly configurable multi-vendor systems.
LIAISE puts forward a new approach to e-business providing a
new solution to implement a B2B system and consequently new services.
The Business model supporting LIAISE is something in-between
the fully open and short-term collaborative model of a marketplace.
The traditional value chain model is substituted by the most
dynamic value constellation one. The fully closed long-term integration
model of a rigid supply chain, where enterprises play a well-defined
role of long-lasting suppliers and customers in a static fashion,
evolves in the new paradigm of enterprise federation. LIAISE
new philosophy propagates a free idea of e-business where unlimited
actors participate to the competition as in the physical reality.
LIAISE philosophy is customer-centric therefore it provides customers
with a potentially unlimited choice of services. It is characterised
by the desired third-party objectivity and industry visibility.
LIAISE also includes the value-added analytical content needed
for customers to make informed, empowered decisions. Mechanisms
of competition, negotiation and co-operation are supported by
the LIAISE architecture. The lower cost of doing business in
this way enables companies to harness the strategic portion of
their value chain. LIAISE will help to exploit the European Union
competitive advantage namely better infrastructures and shorter
communication lines that enable suppliers to deliver goods and
services at
shorter notice.
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Lean
Configuration: Interactive Configuration for the Internet
Ioannis FIKOURAS and Ewgeni GISBRECHT
BIBA, Hochschulring 20, D-28359 Bremen, Germany
During the last years, marketing
of products via the Internet became more and more important for
both customers and manufacturers. Today, electronic shop systems
enable people to select products from catalogues, gather further
information and finally order and pay the articles via a WWW
browser. However, most products sold this way are fixed and cannot
be customised to satisfy the buyer's requirements. Configuration
functionality as incorporated in current ERP systems as well
as industrial strength product development software addresses
the problem of fully automated design of products according to
specification. However such extensive functionality is difficult
to implement, requires extensive resources to run and a large
part of its most costly features offer no added value in an ecommerce
context. ecommerce and the Internet in general pose a number
of specific requirements i.e. lightweight simple design, good
scalability, interactivity, user friendliness, etc. In order
to meet these demands, a new method of configuration has been
developed. This method focuses on non-automatic, interactive,
user friendly configuration of product variants based on a simple
yet flexible method in order to accommodate large numbers of
users and a large variety of different products. This paper will
present configuration concepts developed by the INTELLECT project.
INTELLECT having started in the beginning of 2000 is currently
nearing the completion of its development phase. The paper will
close with a description of the envisaged results and a description
of the upcoming tasks.
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Intelligent
Product Information Search in E-Commerce: Retrieval Strategies
for Virtual Shop Assistants
Marcello L'Abbate and Ulrich Thiel
GMD - IPSI, Dolivostr.15, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany
Online shops offering a large
selection of items usually provide a catalogue which the user
can browse to find items of interest. This results in cumbersome
interactions in which users might loose their orientation or
give up. In order to increase the usability of online shops,
we propose to introduce "virtual shop assistants,"
which are able to converse with users in a natural way, and can
support the different search strategies a user might apply. Thus,
it is possible to directly respond to a user's needs and plans.
In this paper, we discuss a prototypical conversational assistant
based on chatterbot technology enhanced with information retrieval
functions. A sample dialogue illustrates the flexibility of the
conversational interface, which can support a number of different
search strategies.
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Electronic
Payment Systems: Issues of User Acceptance
Dennis ABRAZHEVICH
SOBU & Technical University of Eindhoven (TUE),
PO Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Electronic commerce and electronic
business greatly need new payment systems that will support their
further development. This paper discusses issues of user acceptance
of electronic payment systems by mass customers and presents
results of a user survey on conventional and electronic payment
systems that was conducted with the purpose to discover user
attitudes towards their characteristic properties. The paper
presents issues of users acceptance and guiding principles on
design of electronic payment systems with high level of user
acceptance, which can be a key point in understanding directions
for further development of electronic payment systems.
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E-Payments:
Which Systems in Europe for the Coming Years?
David BOUNIE
Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications
46, rue Barrault - 75634 Paris Cedex 13 -France
In the context of the development
of the Internet, numerous electronic payment systems have been
conceived. The objective of the article is then to put forward
these evolutions in order to foresee which EPS can take the lead
in the European market.
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Interactive
and Real-Time Help-Desk System in Electronic Shop Environment
Kai-Oliver DETKEN(1) and Uwe KAUFMANN(2)
(1) Detken Consultancy & Internet Technologies (DECOIT),
Zu den Stauwiesen, D-28879 Grasberg/Bremen
(2) InfoConsult GmbH, Leher Heerstr. 102, D-28359 Bremen
Today, real-time applications
over the Internet are not possible in a sufficient way. The reason
is, that the Internet is not able to offer quality-of-service
yet. Therefore, interactive and real-time applications in the
area of e-commerce get not the needed support and are not successful
today. Nevertheless, the research project INTELLECT (http://www.ist-intellect.com),
which is founded by the European Commission, integrate new interactive
features within an 3D virtual reality eShop system and add a
help-desk system which supports real-time and direct communication
with the customer. Therefore, this paper will present the current
results of the project INTELLECT regarding the help-desk system
and its requirements like quality-of-service and interactivity.
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eSolutions
- Design Principles for Ease-of-Use
Solveig WIKSTROM(1), Christian PERSSON(2) and Bo LENNSTRAND(3)
(1) School of Business, Stockholm University, SE-1 06 91 STOCKHOLM
Sweden.
(2) Media Technology and Graphic Arts, Royal Institute of Technology,
SE-l 00 44
STOCKHOLM, Sweden
(3) School of Business, Stockholm University, SE-1 06 91 STOCKHOLM,
Sweden.
The rapid expansion of the
infrastructure for broadband communication will soon pave the
way for a large supply of content services in broadband systems.
This content-can be distributed with the help of simple and widely
spread hardware, e.g. televisions with set-top-boxes. This way
the new applications will reach a larger part of the population,
even those without computer and Internet experience. This will
increase demand for applications and interfaces that are very
easy to grasp and use. The focus of this paper is the ease-of-use
in ICT applications. It is an elaboration of results from an
investigation of design principles in a broadband portal prototype
based on the local metaphor. The prototype has been used as a
demonstrator in focus groups using respondents with various computer
experiences. In this paper, results from interviews with respondents
that lack interest and experience in computing are reported.
From the results conclusions can be drawn on how to design an
interface that is easy to use for all kinds of people. The findings
are summarised in a model, demonstrating the implications of
the local metaphor on usability and trust.
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CASH
- Customer After Sales Help (IST-1999-12061)
John Sabaziotis
Singular International, Dodekanissou 10A, 546 25 Thessaloniki,
GREECE
The objective of the CASH IST
project is to create an innovative internet-based solution for
on-line customer support of software products. This paper presents
an overview of the project objectives, the CASH features, underlying
technologies and expected business benefits.
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A
Real-Time Mechanism for Targeted Dynamic Personalization
Michael GOUNARIS, Victoria SKOULARIDOU, Konstantinos TZELEPIS
INTRACOM S.A., Research & Development Division, Development
Programmes Dept.
Markopoulo Ave., P.O. Box 68, 190 02 Peania, Attika, GREECE
The strategic role of the consumer
in the Internet economy clearly reshapes the meaning of marketing
concept leading to separate the traditional marketing from the
marketing in Electronic Retailing. The active involvement of
the consumer in the shopping process could be utilised by the
marketers so as to design new products and develop product and
marketing strategies. Marketers, enabled by the advances in technology,
target their customers on a more personalised, segmented and
customised basis. The Targeting Mechanism introduced in this
paper, can be seen as an efficient personalised marketing and
one-to-one customisation technique, which can realise segmentation
and consumer targeting on a real-time basis. It is a set of software
components that can be easily integrated into existing electronic
commerce systems in order to provide personalised services (such
as targeted advertisements), 'narrow-casting' promotion techniques
(such as couponing, e-mail discount alerts, recommendations),
etc.
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An
Intelligent Framework for the Calculation of Discounts in Electronic
Shops
Jens HOMANN and Martin HALATCHEV
University of Technology Dresden, Department of Computer Science,
Institute for Applied Computer Science, 01062 Dresden, Germany
In electronic shop transactions
the price negotiation process is based on a simple acceptance
or rejection of predefined supplier conditions. These conditions
may result in discounts which we describe by the mean of business
rules. The paper will described a framework for the representation
of these roles in more detail and will give an overview of the
implementation of this approach with the mean of first order
logic and XML.
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The
Spanish Speaking Countries Electronic Commerce Market
Juan PEIRE(1), Manuel CASTRO(1) and Paloma Vallejo(2)
(1) Electrical and Computer Department / UNED, Ciudad Universitavia,
s/n - 28040 Madrid - SPAIN
(2) Ley & Law, c/General Martinez Campos 47, l dcha. 28010
Madrid - SPAIN
This paper analyses the fast
growing electronics business in the Spanish speaking community.
Language dispersion, several applicable laws, cultural barriers,
will be address to show that even the market is no very big yet
it will explode in the future. Key words: E-commerce, market
analysis, Spanish speaking community.
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GeoMarkt.NRW
- An E-Commerce Platform for Geospatial Information and Services
Rudiger GARTMANN, Bernhard HOLTKAMP
Fraunhofer Institut fur Software- und Systemtechnik ISST, Dortmund,
Germany
PO Box 520130, D-44207 Dortmund
The geospatial information
market is an "Emerging Market" and of special interest
for the private sector as well as for the public hand. Therefore,
the German state North-Rhine Westphalia has launched its Geodata
Infrastructure (GDI NRW) initiative which aims to set up a technical
and organisational infrastructure for a business-to-business
geo data market. Within GDI NRW GeoMarktNRW is a central component
for business-to-business commerce to cope with the complexities
of web-based trading of geo information. Hence, GeoMarkt.NRW
is designed as a generic platform for the implementation of marketplaces
for different user groups.
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Extended
Products: Observatory of Current Research and Development Trends
Bernd E. HIRSCH(1), Jens SCHUMACHER(1), Jens ESCHENBACHER(1),
Kim JANSSON(2), Martin OLLUS(2), Iris KARVONEN(2)
(1) University of Bremen, Hochschulring 20, 28359 Bremen, Germany
(2) VTT Automation, PO Box 1301, FIN-02044 VTT, Finland
The main aim of the EXPIDE
IST-1999-29105 cluster project is to combine the knowledge gained
by many different European funded research projects to create
a coherent view about extended products in dynamic enterprises.
This paper explains briefly the new term "Extended Product"
and describes how a physical product can be extended with intangible
functions and services. An introduction to the Observatory of
research work in the area is given together with the first observed
general trends.
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Tourism
in the Age of Internet - A Solution for Destinations
Pietro Beritelli(1), Mathias Muller(2) and Bernhard R. Katzy(2)
(1) ITF-HTW, Comercialstr. 19,700O Chur, Switzerland,
(2) CeTIM, Center for Technology and Innovation Management Munich
- Amsterdam, Werner Heisenbergweg 39, 85577 Neubiberg, Germany
Electronic commerce is a catalyst
and synonymous with greater market transparency and immediate
global competition. As for many ventures around the world the
tourism and travel industry shows radical changes with the advent
of the Internet. Especially in the tourism and travel industry
change is not limited to the application of new (web-) technologies
to increase the efficiency of existing processes. We expect "disintermediation"
to bring about entirely new industry structures. We present an
integrated solution, which enables destinations to offer integrated
and customised tourist services. It goes without saying that
the solution includes a web-interface. In our case it is an animated
3-D representation of an entire destination, e.g. Davos or Rothenburg.
In contrast to the bulk of existing webpages however, this page
is not oriented towards automating the traditional booking process,
but is based on providing a virtual event and tourist experience.
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E-Tour:
Multimedia Mobile Guides to Enhance Fruition of the Heritage
Francesco BELLOTTI, Riccardo BERTA, Alessandro DE GLORIA, Andrea
GABRIELI and Massimiliano MARGARONE
DIBE.- Deportment of Electronic and Biophysical Engineering,
University of Genoa, Via Opera Pia 11a, I6145 Geneva (Italy)
The rapid evolution of the
Information Technology (IT) offers a great opportunity to improve
fruition of the heritage. The possibility of processing digital
information and of providing interactive multimedia contents
and services to tourists opens new prospects for parks and museums
and also for the local commercial and industrial companies. The
E-Tour project has developed multimedia mobile tourist guides
on palmtop computers. In this paper we present the opportunities
and the challenges of this new field, as they are emerging from
the deployment of the first guides in several European areas.
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Best
Practice in Dynamic Networked Organisation
Peter Weiss
FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik, Germany
Haid-und-Neu-Strasse 10-14, D- 76131 Karlsruhe
INPRANET is a Best-Practice-Pilot
performed by a group of SMEs from five European countries, the
Infranet-Partners, which are combining their individual marketing,
technical and support resources under a single brand, to grow
the market for their products and services in Europe by exploiting
new project opportunities, especially in market sectors where
their technologies not widely used today. These SMEs are typical
for the European marketplace of tomorrow, they provide highly
specialised services and products and can only survive, if they
succeed to co-operate in an efficient and effective way. The
improvement of the business practices of Infranet-Partners will
be done by introduction of the information-management-system
GenesisWorld, which assists the demands of dynamic networked
organisations (DNO), serves the above mentioned requirements
and allows co-operation, inter-operation and on-line employee
consultation between the business partners.
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