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The Beauty of Integration

Like eDiets, Reflect.com also developed proprietary technology tocustomize its productsin this case, skin and hair care products andcosmetics. When the online company (which is majority-owned by Procter& Gamble and 15 percent owned by venture capital firm InstitutionalVenture Partners) launched in 1999, many onlookers were skeptical thatthe company could actually do such a thing, says Jonathan Grayson,Reflect's CIO. Besides convincing women that customizing beautyproducts is possible, Reflect.com also has to carve a niche for itselfin the highly competitive beauty care space.

Now, when a customer wanders on to Reflect.com and indicates aninterest in buying eye cream, she is prompted to fill out aquestionnaire that will help Reflect.com create a product that suitsher needs. She indicates, for example, whether she gets dark circlesor puffiness under her eyes, whether she would like the skin under hereyes to be smoother, if she has laugh lines that she wants to reduce,and if her eyes are sensitive.

Once she completes the questionnaire, it is transmitted toReflect.com's homegrown matrix system and its IBMIBM Webspheretransaction system, which processes the order. The matrix system is aconnected system that learns from example rather than following presetprograms. The matrix determines which active ingredients should orshould not be included in a product given the parameters the customerhas provided. So if the customer purchasing the eye cream indicatesshe wants to minimize dark circles under her eyes but thinks hercrow's feet give her character, her eye cream will be made withvitamin C to treat the dark circles, but vitamins A and K, whichsupposedly reduce wrinkles, will be left out. Alles zu IBM auf CIO.de

Because Reflect wanted to go beyond customizing products topersonalize its every interaction with every customer, Grayson had toovercome the biggest challenge companies face when trying to dopersonalization effectively. He had to create an infrastructure inwhich disparate data sourcesfrom Reflect's e-commerce transactionsystem to its CRMCRM, manufacturing and fulfillment systemscould all beaccessed as one. And he did that in two ways: by basing all of thesystems on OracleOracle databases and by making them feed into an Epiphanydata mart. For example, the transaction server, the Web server and thehomegrown system that formulates each customized product access thesame database. The data mart also pulls information from those serversand systems. So if a buyer who once customized eye cream replaces it,Reflect.com will automatically cross-market other eye products to herin a pop-up ad. Alles zu CRM auf CIO.de Alles zu Oracle auf CIO.de