Adding new products or deleting old products requires no manual interaction since new products are automatically loaded from the product database as soon as they are included. In most cases, excentos loads the data every night so that new products are online 1 day later.

You can "prepare" the Guided Selling-System to include new products by providing a "live-date" (start and end date) for each product.

If you want to add a product attribute, this requires a simple Change Request:

• if the product attribute already exists in the knowledge model, we just activate it for you
• if the product attribute does not yet exist in the knowledge model and if it is a "display only", we easily integrate it
• if the product attribute does not yet exist in the knowledge modeland is a "searchable facet" (i.e. you want users to be able to search in your product range for this attribute), we should define the attribute together to make sure that the recommendation stays optimal.
  

Depending on our agreement and the complexity of the change, the Change Request can be handled at no additional costs within our Service Operation.

excentos' user interface technology is based on Web Standards. Right-to-left languages (RTL) can be implemented as far as browsers support it.

RTL-support may require additional efforts to adopt the style of the Guided Selling-Systems. In most cases, this can be done by css-customization.

Our customers don't need any additional hardware since all applications are maintained and operated in excentos' Software-as-a-Service model. Thus, all machines are provided by excentos and our hosting partners.

The hardware requirements that excentos needs to provide for you depend on the number of Guided Selling-Systems deployed and the estimated load. Until now, all our customers are operated on stock servers whose performance is comparable to a desktop system. Scaling is parallel over many machines, there is no need for especially big servers.

Yes, the excentos system automatically prioritizes product recommendations via its intelligent matching technology. The knowledge model defined by excentos and tested by our customer already makes sure that we recommend the products you really want to sell.

In addition to the knowledge model, our customers can provide per-product "push" factors (e.g. margin, inventory level, top seller)  that are updated daily.

If all that is not enough, we define a custom sorting logic that can be freely implemented using the expressiveness of logical source code.

Yes, excentos supports the definition of product alternatives (e.g. various colors or sizes of a basic product). The information about basic product and product alternatives needs to be included in the product data source.

If product alternatives are known, excentos can intelligently handle them in order to recommend e.g. another size or color if the desired product is not available.

Yes, excentos can support cross-selling in order to drive your revenues with high-margin accessories or other related products. To support cross-selling, excentos needs explicit information about related products or accessories. This information should be included in your product information management system (PIM).

excentos can also enhance the cross-selling by promoting specific accessories based on knowledge about the user or the basic product (e.g. recommend expensive notebook carry case with expensive notebook).

Yes, the design of excentos' Guided Selling-Technology allows for a lot of customization.
The implementation of specific business needs can be implemented by data points in you product information management system (PIM) that can be maintained by your staff (e.g. push factors) or by a definition of specific rules (e.g. country-specific recommendation behaviour) that is implemented by excentos.

However, all adaptations need to be done within the same framework (e.g. same product data model, same user interface).

The included amount of customization is described in the offer. Further customization can always be done via purchase of professional services from excentos.

excentos can provide support for your countries and their marketing managers, product managers or IT staff. We can provide support in German and English language.

The level of support depends on the service level agreements agreed in the contract. In most cases, it is useful if our customer provides first-level support to better coordinate.

excentos seamlessly integrates into the existing website of the online shop or product manufacturer. excentos therefore applies the standards as implemented in the existing website.

To achieve maximum AJAX functionality, we do use certain additional HTML attributes that do not break compatibility with the standards.

Typically, your IT staff does do not need to configure the excentos system themselves because this is part of excentos' Software-as-a-Service offering.

If certain self-configuration possibilities are agreed upon, the need for training is very small and can be done in-house for the level of complexity exposed.

excentos provides manuals and HOWTOs for all tasks that need to be done by your IT staff (e.g. website integration, content translation, web analytics integration).