Feb 24th 2000: Startup Agillion launched its service to help smallbiz compete like-for-like with ecommerce giants yesterday. The $30-a-month application enables small businesses to streamline communications with their customers through secure, individual Web portals.

"Big businesses' edge in one-to-one customer service ends today, and it ends here," announced CEO and co-founder Steve Papermaster during the official launch webcast yesterday. The development has the potential to spread Amazon.com-style customer service throughout the Internet, he claimed.

Papermaster and co-founder Frank Moss - a much-watched industry player since IBM acquired his previous venture, systems management giant Tivoli - are being careful to distance Agillion from ASPs who offer outsourced versions of established applications. �We looked at the ASP model in business plan and threw it away," company chairman Moss told ASP News Review in an exclusive interview. "The ASP model didn't meet the needs of the market we are after.�

�Most of what we see in the ASP industry today is essentially a timesharing model reinvented,� added Papermaster.

Moss and Papermaster decided to start over with Agillion, aiming to build a system that works from the ground up. The company's evolution was an outgrowth of a frustration both had felt in every service venture they created - "company disconnect."

�Small businesses have existed because they know about their customer,� said Moss. �They want to be able to get on the Internet and protect customer intimacy.�

For Agillion, they mapped out a system of web-based interaction that would allow a small business to build a common repository of information for its all dealings with customers. At the core of the system are personalised customer web pages similar to those originally pioneered by direct-selling computer manufacturer Dell. Although costly and time consuming to implement for a single company, Agillion makes the system affordable by sharing it across a customer base that it expects will quickly reach many thousands.

Accessed through a URL and a password, these central repositories of information permit collaboration between marketing, service and sales personnel, as well as real time interaction with customers. The steady stream of communication flowing through various departments gradually builds up data on customers.

�Winning companies master the skill of creating a consistent and up-to-date customer view,� said Moss. The Agillion system is the antithesis of costly ERP systems that �could never make the customer feel like they are the only customer,� he added. �Small businesses don�t want rules and policies required by traditional ERP software. They just want information on their customers that is up-to-date.�

Businesses in the real estate and legal sectors are enjoying success with Agillion that is quantifiable by numbers. Dan Lynch, co-founder and team leader of TeamLynch RE/Max Plus, one of the top real estate teams in Cincinnati OH, claims that referrals from past clients have increased 70 percent since it became a customer.

Andrew Rauch of Infraworks, a software vendor that develops a suite of products to protect digital content for Fortune 100 clients, is impressed with the speed of scalability for real time interaction and customization. �I can create a personalised template for a customer in two minutes. Previously, it took weeks,� Rauch told ASP News Review.

Rauch, who has a special interest in Web security because of his business, expressed a heightened level of confidence in the centralised data component of the ASP model. �Agillion has made the investment to insure [against] security threats a key consideration,� he said, citing the Ernst & Young certification received by the company.

The service, which has been in pre-launch development and trials since last October, is available from Agillion on a free trial offer until June. Thereafeter, the $29.95 monthly charge permits unlimited personal pages for each user business.

Agillion was founded in 1998 and garnered more than $40 million in first round financing led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from Cisco Systems, Morgan Stanley & Co, Hambrecht & Quist, Integral Capital Partners, Insight Capital Partner and MSD Capital.

Report by Lisa Paul

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