Blue Martini Product Focuses On ManufacturingBlue Martini Product Focuses On Manufacturing

Blue Martini Software Inc. next week will unveil a new customer-relationship management suite designed for the manufacturing industry. The suite, scheduled to ship in the first quarter of next year, comes with applications for conducting online marketing campaigns and commerce, managing channel-partner relationships, and tracking customer-service calls and assistance.

The manufacturing suite, priced at $250,000--with individual modules available at $70,000 each--combines industry-specific business processes and workflows with Blue Martini's generic CRM suite. Templates included in the product let businesses set up product returns, order management, and warranty management workflows. The company says its new strategy of letting customers purchase standalone modules makes its products more affordable to midsize companies.

Wilson Sporting Goods is using Blue Martini's generic CRM suite but will consider migrating to the new manufacturing suite once it's completed its initial implementation. Wilson signed a deal with Blue Martini this past summer, and expects to complete its deployment sometime next spring. Rick Kersack, Wilson's director of interactive marketing, says he considered 20 to 25 CRM vendors, including BroadVision Inc. and Vignette Corp., before deciding on Blue Martini.

Kersack says the combination of the channel-relationship management and commerce apps will let Wilson communicate more effectively with customers and partners. "Over the long term, we expect the Blue Martini implementation to help build a relationship with our customers," says Kersack. "We focus on grassroots marketing, and this plays right into that strategy."