By John Sterlicchi CRM Buyer Part of the ECT News Network
08/07/02 12:33 PM PT
JeevesOne Enterprise uses natural language processing -- a technology pioneered by
Ask Jeeves -- to route questions, analyze historical user interactions and mine for data.
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The capability for information-seeking customers to delve deep into a corporation's
core business applications is the key component of JeevesOne Enterprise.
Its key selling point is that it allows customers to
use a corporate Web site to retrieve relevant answers to more questions, freeing
up a business' contact center
representatives for more complex telephone queries.
Jeeves Solutions, the enterprise
software division of the Internet
search company Ask Jeeves, has combined
newly acquired technology with its own
self-service application to create the
JeevesOne Enterprise application.
Acquired Octopus
When Ask Jeeves bought Octopus Software earlier this year, it acquired technology
that enabled the mining of structured data within core business systems. In addition,
Octopus had developed sophisticated data presentation capabilities.
Prior to the Octopus acquisition, Jeeves already knew that when people asked questions on
a company Web site, many of the answers existed in unstructured documents
published there. However, the company also realized that a great
deal of information was not available --
residing within structured databases and core business systems that the enterprise
used, such as SAP (NYSE: SAP) order management or
PeopleSoft human resources software.
"One of the things we realized was that to provide a true self-service capability
on a company's Web site, we needed to be able to extract data from those systems in
addition to the unstructured content these companies had available," James Speer,
product manager for Jeeves Solutions, told CRM Buyer Magazine.
Core Technologies
JeevesOne Enterprise is the resultant combination of several core technologies the
company developed, bought and integrated:
The product leverages natural language processing (NLP) to route questions,
analyze historical user interactions and mine for data. (Jeeves is a pioneer of the
NLP question-and-answer search, which it first used on its Ask.com Web site.)
JeevesOne Enterprise provides analytical insight into the
type of questions customers and Web site visitors were asking.
Enterprise Adapters -- either prebuilt for
Siebel and SAP systems or
customized using the Adapter API -- open the door to back-end system information to
ensure that customers can retrieve all they need in a single visit.
Robust Security
Those core technologies, coupled with what Jeeves calls "robust security features,"
enable customers to go to a company's Web site and ask such questions as, "What is
the status of Order 12345?"
JeevesOne Enterprise can interpret the intent of a question using the NLP technology
and route it to the order management system within the company. "Fairly sophisticated"
techniques are being used to field queries, according to Speer, reducing the need
for customer support reps to handle individual calls.
So far, two customers have bought JeevesOne Enterprise, which has a base price of
US$155,000. One is a high-tech company whose purchase is still unannounced,
and the other is Travelocity.com, which expects that JeevesOne Enterpise
will cut down the number of questions customers need to ask to find relevant travel
information.
Jeeves said it is targeting JeevesOne Enterprise especially toward the government,
technology, financial services and retail markets.
Aberdeen analyst Guy Greese is enthusiastic about its capabilities.
"This is where everyone is trying to go but it's very difficult to get to," he told
CRM Buyer. He acknowledged that Jeeves Solutions might initially have a
perception problem in the marketplace as -- until the launch of JeevesOne Enterprise --
the company had no credentials in searching for structured data.
According to Jeeves, competitive products include Verity
K2 and Inktomi Enterprise Search 4.5.
Ask Jeeves Ousts Overture, Goes Google in $100M Deal July 19, 2002
Ask Jeeves clearly needs the bottom-line boost that Google results might be able to provide. It posted a loss of $6.5 million on $17.6 million in revenue during the second quarter.
Ask Jeeves and 24/7 Launch Fee-Based Service July 10, 2002
Index Express does not guarantee clients a particular placement on either Ask Jeeves or
Teoma.com. Those search engines' results are determined by algorithms that rank sites.
Related News Alerts
More by John Sterlicchi
Amdocs ClarifyCRM - 'Coexistence Architecture' August 13, 2002
Clarify's Process Manager takes into account all of a business' processes -- order
fulfillment, for example -- and integrates the information with all third-party
systems and software.
JeevesOne 2.0 provides a self-service solution for asking customer questions usinga next-generation, natural language and information retrieval principles. The application comes in several editions, including JeevesOne Search, JeevesOne Standard, JeevesOne Enterprise and JeevesOne Modules.
Selling Points
Decreases customer support costs, increases online revenue and improves site usability for end users through advanced natural language search, self-service and customer intelligence gathering solution for enterprises.
Pricing
JeevesOne Search starts at $45K, JeevesOne Standard starts at $95K and JeevesOne Enterprise starts at $155K
Availability
Currently on the market
Target Markets
Companies looking for self-service solutions for communicating with customers, including firms in the financial services, technology, pharmaceutical and automotive industries.
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