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The Gen X version of phones need to be smart enough to start making sense of the master’s web browsing or phone browsing actions and proactively deliver results or signal alerts. With new customized search technologies which Microsoft’s Bing or Google pioneer, technology comes close to analyzing usage patterns of the users, and tagging the same through user IPs or cookie files and then displaying close to what the user would like to see when he next comes to search. If Amazon’s “You might be interested” features which tags useful products based on the user’s previous search or on similar buyer profiles is applied onto smart phones, information truly comes close to the user’s accesses. What’s more, users also get to monitor work data from wherever they are – alerts on sales figure jumps, operational hazards, quick bites into daily scorecards, server performance monitoring keeps you on top of everything that you need to manage and spearhead.

What the web age called “You’re just a click away”, smart phones have replaced with “Touch me and go anywhere, anytime”.

Our folks here have worked on an iPhone app which helps the client manage server performance remotely through his smart phone. They’ve also been dabbling with dashboards, database integration, et al developing the capability to access data through mobile OS powered by Google, Microsoft, Apple and Blackberry. Feel free to buzz us ( with your smart phones of course! ) or even just write to us, to know where and how we can help you with your smart phone requirements.

Benefits of Mobile BI Reporting

1. Better decisions – Executives on the move and in the field can make better informed decisions as they have all the relevant information at their fingertips
2. Visible business performance – You can make business performance visible by using mobile graphical dashboards. Users will be able to monitor business processes and performance at a glance, and also be able to drill down to view details and do further analysis.
3. Better time utilization – Mobile executives will be able to use their time more effectively if they are empowered to perform productive work when they are in a customer’s office, or at a branch or just before meetings or at the airport.
4. Agility – Having relevant information at your fingertips helps you identify trends and opportunities early and helps you gain a competitive edge. Mobile executives will be able to respond faster to situations that require their attention.
5. Collaboration – Mobile executives will be available to and connected with other key decision makers 24/7.
6. Customer satisfaction – Mobile executives will have details of the entire customer account when visiting a customer location. This will enable them to offer more appropriate solutions to customer problems and increase customer satisfaction.

Aomori Yakult Seller increased sales by 105 percent in one year.
Aomori Yakult Seller Co. is a Japanese company that sells health food products directly to consumers through a sales network of 600 “Yakult ladies.” As changing lifestyles led to a declining customer base, an outdated manual system for gathering and analyzing sales and customer data made it impossible to get good business intelligence. After deploying a new automated mobile-workforce and BI reporting solution, the company was able to increase sales 105 percent in a single year, shorten distributors’ workdays by two hours, cut data-gathering from six weeks to one day, and make customer and sales information available in real time.
Options
With the smartphone market picking up, we have a lot of options. The main contenders are Apple iPhone, RIM Blackberry, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile powers business intelligence solutions for the busy traveling user. IBM® Cognos® 8 has extended their Go! Family of products to include the Mobile clients as well, through their rendering Go!Mobile by providing users with access to timely, secure, and personalized information on their mobile devices and operating systems, including BlackBerry®, Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 3rd Edition wireless.

The main feature of modern smartphones is full HTML support – this makes delivery of BI a lot easier than in the past. A single web-based solution that renders pages for different devices is often the most cost-effective solutions.
If the corporation has standardized on a specific device, then native applications can be created that are specific to the device – these applications can access hardware-specific features that are unique to the device.
Stylusinc specializes in tailor-made business intelligence solutions for small and medium enterprises who want the best-of-breed solutions employing data across multiple clients, including varied mobile platforms, the cloud, desktops or other smart clients. Stylusinc’s expertise lies in understanding the business of the client and accordingly tailoring the business intelligence framework for the company by using the Microsot technology foundation and industry specific KPIs to suit the company’s decision system and enable faster access to data and decision making throughout the company. Our mobile platform specialists ensure that your data is well integrated with smartphone providers such as Apple iPhone, Google Android, RIM Blackberry and Microsoft Windows Mobile, without compromising on data transparency and data security.
Enquire with us to ensure that you’re business is intelligent, tomorrow.

Key Points:
Data Warehousing, Web Housing, Data Mining
Personalization
Anonymous profiling
Click-stream analysis

Intelligent Databases: The facilitators of advanced Personalization

How would you expect the storekeeper at your nearest store, where you are a frequent visitor, to offer you personalized service?Well, he would know your favorite items and preferred brands, won’t he? So, he organizes them to be in your easy reach. Perhaps he may himself suggest a new product, which was introduced recently, that falls within your interest area. Now this is not very imaginative isn’t it? It required quite a few visits for you to get this personalized service. What about someone just like you who is coming to this store for the first time?

Websites that use cookies to offer personalized services to their visitors do the same thing. Cookies only help you identify a particular user and then you try to personalize your site for that visitor. Cookies do not give you any information about the behavior for e.g. what pages did the visitor visit before clicking this page and what pages did he visit after this page; what did he shop for etc.

To make it more clear, now consider your storekeeper friend. Based on his data about you, he can go a step further and watch your buying pattern. He also tries to understand all the youth in a similar age group and then tries to say that all youth in the age group 21- 29 who come to my store prefer these types of products. Their buying peaks in summer and therefore it makes sense to run promotions targeting the youth in summer.

One can broadly state that this is an example of collating all information about youth who visit a store and analyzing their behavior. This is exactly what intelligent databases permit you to do. Hit counters and cookies give you data, which does not translate to information. If you want information on which you like to take some action then you will have to consider data warehousing, web housing and data mining. Let us now try to understand what these are.

Data Warehousing, Web Housing, Data Mining

Web housing is essential to analyze the click stream data and understand customer behavior. WEB housing is collecting data from log files. A very important thing to note here is that Web housing does not spy. It just takes the data in your Web Site Log files.

Now, 90% of web sites do not do anything with log files. Here we are saying that if you want your site to do better, you need to understand how users behave on your site and we are only analyzing the data in the log files. Log files have simple text info of all the incidents happening on your site, Example will be to get to a web site and take a log file. Like for example if you use IIS server on Windows; under system32 directory you will see a log file directory. If you open a log file it will typically give you the timestamp of a hit; the page accessed; the IP address of the request etc.

Data mining is mining through your data using sophisticated algorithms to find some pattern or seasonal predictability. Data warehousing is the analysis of your data in your RDBMS or DBMS. This is extremely useful for ad-hoc reporting, getting reports on the fly without user / MIS help.

Data warehousing and Data mining are related topics. With Data Warehousing, you take data, extract it, cleanse it and then put the data in a data mart / data warehouse so that it can now be analyzed. Data mining is to do with the ready data - analysis of this data, determining the patterns / seasonality / trends hidden in this data.

1. Introduction

One of the major problems that were pointed out at the advent of online stores was the lack of personal touch. An online store looked no match for the local storekeeper. He remembers your name, what you bought last time, your spending habits, etc. He makes you feel comfortable because of the knowledge he has and because of the way he communicates the knowledge.
Personalization of the website was the solution offered to make online stores more personal. Personalization goes beyond just saying, “Welcome back, John”. The personalization should be smart enough to collect data and present it in an intelligent fashion. Throwing back the information the visitor had given is not very smart. ( Imagine giving a fake name of Moby Dick and presented with a message, “Welcome back, Moby Dick”) Personalization should enrich the user experience and increase the loyalty.

There are two kind of personalization that can be offered on a website - overt and covert.

2. Overt personalization

Here, the site displays information that the user has given explicitly. One of the typical examples would be data collected during checkout. The user is typically required to give the following details

• Credit card details
• Billing address
• Shipping address

Now when the user returns, he wouldn’t want to type these details again. He would like the web site to remember this.

Another good example of overt personalization is asking users their shopping preference. Would they like to view the hot deals always on the home page? Would they like to view top selling books on the book page? These would be some of the questions the user is asked to answer. Knowing answers to these questions could enhance the user’s experience.

2.1 Privacy

Discussion on overt personalization by default brings up the issue of privacy. Privacy had always been a hot topic. Visitors are very sensitive to privacy issue. It helps to publish a thorough, accurate and clear privacy policy on the site. Making sure that all stakeholders approve this privacy policy is also a good practice.

2.2 Data collection

Asking the right questions is another part of overt personalization. It is important not to ask questions that could turn-off a user. One good rule of thumb is not to ask questions that are not useful.

2.3. Covert personalization

Covert personalization is accomplished by collating data about the visitors. This is not data given by user explicitly. This is more as a result of data mining.

3.1 Recommendation engine

You might have noticed “Customers who bought this book also bought” heading at www.amazon.com. This is covert personalization.

A recommendation engine has typically two parts

a. The data collection partThis part constantly digs the database to come up with patterns. A typical scenario would be

• Clustering customers based on their orders
• Clustering products (those who bought the pen also bought the ink)
• Collecting demographic information and trying to relate that to items purchased
• Items bought by long-term purchasers and short-term purchasers

b. Recommendation part

This is where you would set rules based on the data collected. Amazon for example gives users a combo offer tempting the customer to buy that one more item he wasn’t planning to purchase. The intelligence comes from knowing that lot of people who bought book 1 had also bought book 2.

3.2 Anonymous profiling

It is a fact that most of the visitors to your site might never register with you. These anonymous visitors might never give you any explicit information. But nevertheless they are important and it pays to enrich their user experience.

One good example of this scenario would be asking an Indian visitor if he knew that it’s possible to pay in Indian rupee. It is possible to know from the IP of the visitor which country he is from.

There are companies offering services in this area. For example akamai (www.akamai.com) offers to help web sites to deliver customized content based on parameters like country, region, city, time zone, etc.

3.3 Click-stream analysis

Click-stream analysis is the process of collecting, analyzing and reporting data about the pages visitors visit. It is possible to know in which order the pages were visited, how long the visitors spent on each page, etc. All this data is usually stored in the web server logs. Alternately data could be captured by applications too.

The data can be analyzed and patterns can be extracted out of it.

A more sophisticated usage is Real-time click-stream analysis. This is helpful for covert personalization because the visitor could be served customized content based on his behavior on the site.

4. Summary

The visitor expects the web sites to start behaving intelligently. They expect the sites to adapt to their usage without threatening their privacy. Personalization is the solution.

If what you’ve read matches with your requirements, please contact us and share your ideas. Or if you’d like to read more about our services and see if what we offer interests you, please click here

Key Points
Some of the top e-businesses in the field today:
E-Bay
HomeStore.com
Oracle
CISCO
Amazon.com
DoubleClick.com
YAHOO!

At a time when ‘dot-cons’ and ‘dot-com doom’ are the most commonly used phrases, discussing dot-com successes would be tantamount to burying one’s head in the sand and talking. Or is it? Is the Internet revolution really over? According to analysts and the economy soothsayers, No! The Internet has entrenched itself into the economy today. This medium that provides enormous opportunities to any business by removing the twin obstacles of time and distance is here to stay, and thrive.

What lessons can be learnt from those who survived the carnage on the Infobahn? How can you rate a successful e-business?

The outward signs of a robust and thriving business are:

• Revenue increases
• Ability to generate profits
• Success increating meaningful alliances
• Success in expanding into new markets
• Differentiating itself

What are the key areas that a profitable web site needs to concentrate on?

• Develop a unique web site
• Control the product line
• Introduce new products on a regular basis
• Ensure easy and reliablecredit-card payment methods
• Provide customer-friendly policies
• On-time delivery
• Keep promises
• Develop a clevermarketing strategy
• Be the best in your field

Being ranked among the top 5 in a search engineis only a part of the e-commerce puzzle, your web site needs to satisfy customers once they get there. With new and nimble competitors springing up by the dozen, it is easy for a customer to opt for a competitor who may be easier to do business with. One sure way to avoid this is to adopt new technology. The goal should be to automate all processes as much as possible while maintaining personalized human interaction at the same time. Implementation of technology following conventional time-tested principles like dedication and expertise in an adaptive, dynamic environment is what is required.

Existing business models are of many kinds:

• Advertising - banner and direct marketing
• Subscription sites
• Customer services
• Directory services
• Content providers
• Product sales

Most successful companies pursue several related but different models concurrently. They defy easy categorization by diversifying revenue streams and becoming hybrids in a cost-efficient way.

E-Bay

A company that has emerged unscathed from the recent dot-com bust with profits soaring to almost 400% and revenues doubling in the past one year. It has transformed auctions that were limited to garage sales and flea markets into highly evolved e-market places. Selling just about anything, from antiques and jewelry to computers, automobiles and even auto insurance, it has 29.7 million registered users today.

Adopting an amazing and unique culture, where buyers and sellers of all items are allowed to post their comments online, where credit-card payment facilitiesare secure and easy, the company projects a trustworthy and reliable image.

Apart from bidding, certain high quality goods can be sold at prices fixed by the seller. This site also offers professional servicesfor all kinds of business needs. A widespread global reach makes its easy for a buyer in Hong Kong to bid and buy a product from a seller in Paris while the regional sites in North America are able to offer hard to ship merchandise.

Person-to-person trading and a barter economy have established the company on a secure B2B and B2C platform. Other companies like Yahoo! and Excite have been quick to catch on and incorporate auctions into their sites. Priceline.com, a site that offers airline tickets on discount has begun experimenting quite successfully with this business model.

To summarize, their business model can be elucidated thus:

• Automation of traditional methods of selling unique items
• Reliability in mode of payments
• Customer friendly company
• Professional services in addition to just plain selling of goods
• Global reach
• Regional diversification
• Successful advertising

HOMESTORE.COM

Statistics have revealed that realty sites account for about 9.6% of all online visitors. A Company that has dominated the real estate field with 3.28 million customers in January 2001 and listed among the Fortune top e-50. It registered a growth of 252% at one stage.

Homestore.com allows prospective buyers to review properties before buying. Is that all? No, they also offer financial advice, online loans, and buyer’s guides to homes and household items, home improvement tips, remodeling, and safety and security aspects. Useful advice when moving home and tips on resettling has ensured user satisfaction to the core.

Their main revenue came in from subscriptions (52%) and the remaining from advertising. As a subscription site they picked a specific topic which a segment of the population would be passionate about and marketed their services throughstrategic advertising.

Subscription sites that allow users access to a regularly updated online database of any kind for a fee are fast evolving into healthy and strong e-businesses. Why have they become so popular? Yes, free stuff is available anywhere on the Internet, but most of it tends to be disorganized and chaotic. This makes customized information worth paying for.

Useful tips for a wannabe subscription site:

• Pick a specific target that niche users may be passionate about
• Market the site through banner ads and direct marketing (newsletters and e-mail) that offer a few tantalizing freebies regularly
• Offer the complete content to members only

Links worth looking at are:

• Thestreet.com - A financial journalism site that offers timely news and analysis, market trends, ratings, expert consultancy services, conferences and newsletters.
• Christiansciencemonitor.com: The electronic edition of this famous 90-year old newspaper.
• Preachingtoday.com: Services like illustration of biblical quotes and facts that preachers can incorporate in their sermons.

ORACLE

This software and service provider entered the digitized world only in 1998, and metamorphosed into a digital pioneer in the span of two years. Innovative products and services and integration of these services have brought them into the forefront of web innovation today.

Products like Biz Online Initiative that deliver simple and complete online services and a host of other tools that customers require in setting up an e-business have made them a one stop shop for e-biz today. Their built-in self-service system for customers, employees and suppliers improved productivity and accuracy and brought down costs by 100’s of millions of dollars. Consulting services with major firms like Sun Professional Systems have established their reliability with customers.

Their business formula:

• Innovative products and packages
• Integration of internal processes
• Exemplary customer service - a user friendly web site that connects customers easily
• Fast online e-business services
• Expert consultancy services

Another company in this league is Exodus Communications, an Internet data center that offers a range of web hosting services, bandwidth on demand, security monitoring. Their servers host leading web sites like Yahoo!, e-Bay and Merril Lynch. They allow these firms to deliver content and applications online round the clock without fail.

35% of their revenue comes from a very successful e-business consulting firm whom they have partnered with (Sapient). They are expanding from 19 data centers to 34 data centers this year.

CISCO

Cisco develops switches and routers for Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wireless Area Networks (WAN) and the related software. They have become the worldwide leaders in networking for the Internet today.

90% of their sales are conducted over the Internet. They offer expertise in planning and executing Internet enabled solutions.

The company has grown in the past 7 years with 71 acquisitions to its credit, the latest being its investments in an optical equipment company and speech recognition software makers. Their business model could be termed an acquisition one!

AMAZON.COM

The customer is King here! Amazon pampers their customers, tracks their tastes and uses this information to create a unique customer experience. This e-tailer cultivates relationships that lead to customers liking and trusting them. This kind of service surpasses the most brilliant technology in use today. Amazon brought in the world of successful one-to-one marketing, a personal touch from another era.

Recently though, they have suffered heavy losses, proving that any successful e-business strategy will survive provided it is based on a solid brick and mortar foundation, a la Barnes and Noble, another famous online bookseller. Although barnesandnoble.com and Barnes the Noble Ltd. are run separately, a customer tends to associate trust and comfort in a known and established brand.

To summarize, exemplary customer service, successful online advertising and special discounted offers made Amazon and books synonymous terms today.

DOUBLECLICK.COM

This Fortune e-50 company offers a collection of premium sites for custom ad-buys and sponsorships in various fields - Business, automobiles, entertainment, technology, travel and health. They help markets build brands, increase sales, maximize revenue and build one-to-one relationships with their customers. They offer agencies plans to manage online campaigns.

Their direct marketing strategies use customer data to refine marketing messages and increase investment returns. One of their divisions, Abacus is one of the largest databases of buyer behavior in about 90 million households in the United States itself. Another division, www.diameter.net conducts online research to evaluate and understand online campaigns and strategies. Some of their clients include www.macromedia.com, www.nasdaq.com, www.networldsolutions.com and www.palm.net.

The web has proven to be an amazing vehicle for advertising and reaching millions without spending a dime on postage and printing. Stu Heinecke Services, an advertising solutions company used personalized cartoon direct mail and achieved response rates as high as 100%.

Online ads possess tremendous communication powers. Banner ads placed on sites like CNN, Lycos, CompuServe, Pathfinder and The New York Times showed that:

appropriate placement of the ad on specific targeted sites,
using a search component or a woman’s face in a banner ad,
using odd-shaped attention grabbing banners,
including trading links with other sites, and
hosting online chat
are a sure fire way to get a response. Online advertising is international advertising that gets a 24X7 exposure for much lesser costs.

YAHOO!

The “operating system” of the net and a site for evolving search engines, free news and information services, online ads, banner ads, sports and news, video and audio, clubs and auction stores has become the most popular directory in the web. Its value lies in its unique and easy categorization of all pages and subjects - a completely professional looking web site in all.

But, a BPI (Buying Power Index) report reveals that more online buying and popularity of a site don’t go hand in hand. Other search engines like Altavista, Excite and Juno seem to have raked in more profits recently.

Online advertising was the main revenue for Yahoo!, but they didn’t really check on what kind of ads worked online. Immediate success stopped them from evolving and developing other important aspects of e-business. As a result, this year they have been forced to cut budgets and ads, showing that generalized media doesn’t work compared to specialized media. Also, all of Yahoo’s content is owned by other sites and only licensed for their use.

Among the other successful dot-coms, trends revealed that online e-brokers offer the best economic models among consumer-centered Internet companies. Instead of spending on physical infrastructure they concentrated in increasing the volume of transactions.

1-800Flowers.com blended telephone and Internet technologies, Reflect.com, a beauty customization site outlasted other higher profile e-tailers in the business, thus proving that the basic B2C business model is valid.

So, what we have seen is that a combination of strategies, smart thinking, brilliant business plans, great and innovative promotional ideas are an integral part of any e-success. There is no doubt that in the near future, an average person anywhere in the world will surf the Internet more often than he or she watches television or uses the telephone. As a result, it makes sense for entrepreneurs of all kinds to come up with ideas of generating income by marketing their products or services to these surfers. Competition in cyberspace may become even fiercer in the future and therefore the right business plan is what will eventually ensure long-term success.

Browse case studies

Technologies/Tools

• .NET 2.0
• MS SQL Server 2005
• TSQL
• Ajax
• MS SQL Server 2006
• SQL Server Analysis Services
• SQL Server Integration Services
• SQL Server Reporting Services
• Dundas
• APEX on Force.com
• WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) on the server
• Apple Push Notification Service for iPhone.
• Cocoa Touch
• Clicktracks, Weblog Expert
• MBTI questionnaire
• Futurenow’s Persuasion Architecture TM
• Adobe Photoshop  CS3
• ASP.NET2.0
• Ajax
• MS SQL Server 2005
• SOA
• .NET 3.0

Solutions

• Airline Jump Seat Authentication Solution
• Retail Store Management Solution
• Vertical Social Networking.
• Knowledge Commerce.
• Customization on AspDotNetStorefront.
• Integration with Sage.
• Online Recruitment Solution
• C2C Online Shopping Solution
• Integrated Data Administration System
• Web Exporter Solution
• Document Management Solution on Force.com
• Multi-linguistic, global Healthcare Billing platform

Horizontals

• Human Capital Management
• Knowledge Management
• Sales and Marketing
• Training and Devlopment
• Administration
• IT

Verticals

• Education
• Retail
• Healthcare
• Aviation
• Resources and Energy
• Technology

Competitive telecommunication costs, well-developed technology and a team that is highly computer-literate form the foundations of our strength. The wide span of our expertise across myriad technologies and platforms, enables us to handle any kind of IT requirement today.

Our Technical Capabilities

We help clients move their services and products up the value chain and create a unique experience for their customers. Our services help consolidate customers, distributors and partners using web-enabled processes and thereby transform key processes within an organization.

Some of our work is described here. Over the past 8 years, we have worked for over 250 international clients. The following portfolio showcases some of the work we’ve done so far.

Web Application Development

Web Design

Web Application Maintenance