Internet-only Customer Contact Solutions Are Booming, But...

AMR Research Inc. (AMR) reports that Wal-Mart pushes its on-line sales in the hope of broadening internationally. AMR expects that at the end of 2008 Wal-Mart will sell 20% of his goods on-line.

AMR furthermore reports that 73% of the retail companies have given on-line sales a very high priority. And a few weeks ago Hans van Nes also pleaded in one of his blog here for customer self-service solutions in customer at the helm.

My own experience corresponds with these findings. Recently I have spoken with companies in banking and insurance, retail, and health care who are also pursuing Internet-only customer and employee contact solutions. Call centers are expensive, need employees, and do not have unlimited opening hours.

Unfortunately, there is one big problem with Internet-only solutions. Do we consider it as a greenfield design? Or do we want system integration with current legacy? The 1st option allows to neglect the current infrastructure and software. The 2nd enforces dealing with legacy systems. Both possibilities are not very attractive, and better avoided if there were a 3rd way...

And there is 3rd way: The MyInformationVault solution from Results2Match! This solution, a neat combination of software and services, lets you deliver information when and where you want to a person on intranets and also over Internet. It allows for simple interfacing with any source, including legacy systems, and has effective facilities for information manipulation, like integration and aggregation.

In your situation, do you also recognize the trend towards Internet-only solutions? We welcome your Internet-only comments!