Selectica Powers BMW North America Virtual Center
12 April 1999
Selectica Powers BMW North America Virtual Center With Custom Configuration Capabilities
Web-Centric ACE Internet Selling System Software Lets BMW Customers Choose
Features of New Car Online; Dealers Reap Benefits of Highly-Qualified Leads,
Shortened Sales Cycles
SAN JOSE, Calif., April 12 -- Selectica,(TM) Inc. today
announced that its market-leading Selectica ACE(TM), the industry's leading
Internet selling system (ISS) application, is powering BMW North America's
Virtual Center (build.bmwusa.com). Now consumers visiting the BMW NA Virtual
Center Web site can select, fully equip, and receive an estimate -- based on
the manufacturer's standard retail price (MSRP) -- for the new BMW of their
dreams. Buyers can print out this estimate and take it to a conveniently
located dealer to complete the purchase. Currently the site sustains more than
one million hits every two weeks with no degradation in performance. The
compelling BMW Web experience recently led research firm, Polk Co., to report
that 48.5 percent of BMW buyers shop via the Internet, the highest percentage
for any auto maker.
The BMW Virtual Center demonstrates the ability to creatively leverage the
Web to build satisfaction and loyalty among both customers and the automotive
dealers who support them. The interactive and highly intuitive Selectica ACE
application suite allows consumers to choose the car they want in the
convenient and relaxing environment of their home or office. Meanwhile, BMW
delivers to its dealers highly qualified leads, who have already defined the
cars they want for a specific price, minimizing the dealers' sales cycles.
Today, BMW forwards customer information to local dealers, so that they can
send follow-up mailings to Web visitors. In the next stage of deployment,
scheduled for the first half of 1999, the BMW Virtual Center will be able to
direct customers in real time to the nearest dealer who has their car choice
in stock.
The BMW Virtual Center, which runs on Hewlett-Packard NetServers, can be
accessed using any standard HTML browser. Consumers simply click through an
easy-to-use interface to choose the car features that match their individual
needs. As they configure the car with choices about the interior, exterior,
wheels, packages and other options, consumers see a running price total. On
the back end, ACE is integrated with BMW's ERP system running on an Oracle
database system to provide BMW with dynamic updates to inventory and pricing
needs for the dealer network. This enables BMW centers to realize cost
efficiencies through reduced inventories and streamlined operations.
"The BMW Virtual Center is an e-commerce solution that offers a win-win
proposition both for customers and dealers. Customers are able to choose and
configure new cars at their convenience in a low-pressure environment, while
dealers get pre-qualified leads, reduced inventories and shorter sales
cycles," said Jim McDowell, vice president of marketing at BMW North America.
"Selectica's ACE gives us the robust functionality, back-office integration
and low cost of ownership we need to deliver an innovative Web solution to our
extensive network of BMW centers and customers in North America. Additionally,
Selectica's solution has offered us the fastest time to deployment, enabling
us to roll-out the first phase of our Web site in 16 weeks."
"The BMW Virtual Center is a cornerstone example of the extraordinary
benefits that an Internet selling system can provide in bringing customers
closer to both a business and the dealer network that supports them," said
Raj Jaswa, president and CEO at Selectica. "ACE offers BMW the robust
Web-centric functionality and scalability required to provide thousands of
online BMW shoppers every week with easy access and fast performance.
Furthermore, the ability to make updates to the application running live on
the Internet without bringing down any servers is critical to ensuring the
24-hour, 7-day availability that BMW is committed to providing its customers."
ACE Product Suite
The ACE Product Suite is the industry's only Web-centric, Internet selling
system software available today. Completely written in Java, it allows any
user with a standard HTML browser to access the software. Key features of the
ACE Product Suite include:
* Highly interactive graphical user interface. Featuring Selectica's
unique, dynamically generated HTML capability, the GUI gives users a powerful
and intuitive environment for configuring and pricing products.
* Advanced multi-threaded, constraint-based rules engine capable of
executing thousands of constraints in sub-second response times.
* Centralized database for consistent, up-to-the-moment pricing and
inventory information.
* Direct integration with back-office systems.
About BMW North America
BMW entered the North American market in 1975. Since then, the company has
grown to include marketing, sales and financial service organizations in the
United States and Canada; a South Carolina manufacturing operation; a design
firm in California; and various other operations throughout the U.S. and
Canada. BMW is represented in North America through a network of more than
375 automobile and 190 motorcycle retailers in the United States and Canada.
BMW (US) Holding Corp., the brand's North American headquarters, is located in
Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.
About Selectica
Selectica, Inc. develops and markets the industry's leading Internet
selling system software, which empowers customers to assess, configure and
purchase products online using standard Web browsers. The 100% Java, open
architecture of Selectica's ACE product suite makes it fast and simple for
businesses to create, maintain and deploy e-commerce systems on their Web
sites, and it inter-operates with existing legacy applications and
environments to enable true build-to-order systems. Today, key customers
include BMW, ClubComputer, Fujitsu PC, Hewlett-Packard, and Olicom. Selectica
is a privately held company headquartered in San Jose, California. The
company's Web site is located at http://www.selectica.com.
NOTE: Selectica and ACE are trademarks of Selectica, Inc. BMW is a
trademark of BMW. All other product and company names may be trademarks of the
companies with which they are associated.