BroadVision: eBusiness for everyone

Epson America - Customer at Work

Overview

Founded in 1975, Epson America Inc. is the U.S. affiliate of Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation. Epson America offers award-winning image capture and image output products for the consumer, business, photography and graphic arts markets. Although the primary distribution channel for Epson products is the retail channel, in 1996 Epson America developed a web site to sell accessories. The site front end connected to Epson America’s mail order ERP system, which processed orders in batch mode. By 1999 the site’s popularity had grown. Epson America chose BroadVision to update portions of the site. The goal was to improve scalability, enable connections to a new ERP system for real-time inventory and order processing and consolidate web sites serving www.epson.com. The site’s business-to-consumer (B2C) version went live in September 2000, the business-to-business (B2B) portion in November 2001.

Key Business Issues

When developing the new version of www.epson.com, Epson America wanted an enterprise-class site mainly to disseminate marketing information to influence customers’ purchase decisions. A significant portion of Epson’s customers research products online. The site’s secondary objective was to provide B2C and B2B customers with the convenience of purchasing direct.