We came to the Ecometry Summit knowing that the topic would be change. Change in the ownership of the Escalate Retail Group, and a big change for Ecometry as the majority of the MPE customers have migrated. Brian Johnson VP GM, Direct Commerce Industry welcomed 145 Ecometry clients and 28 partners to the Summit. Brian introduced everyone to Doug Brown of RedPrairie. In a detailed presentation Doug explained who RedPrairie is, where they came from, what they do and where they see Ecometry fitting into the business. Doug introduced us to Tom Kozenski who is a 40 year veteran and responsible for Global Operations. The summary of Doug's presentation included the following.

- RedPrairies HQ is located in GA
- Have been in business since 1975
- They have 400,000 customers, spanning 50 countries
- Revenue is $375million up from $300million last year including acquisitions

RedPrairie started in Warehouse Automation Systems and the core focus lately has been on supply chain management; however Doug outlined RedPrairies "Eco-System" that includes 3 key areas of Inventory Management, Workforce Management and Transportation. Subcategories within these groupings include Suppliers, Warehouses, 3PL, Stores and In-transit. With the addition of Ecometry to its business, they would be extending the Eco-System to an "All-Channel Commerce" business that will provide an end to end solution from source to consumer and includes Ecometry Suite as a hosted service along with Mobile, Call Center, Client, Social Media and Web.

Doug explained that the current code set of its core solutions does not change and is one consistent platform, which the Ecometry application will be moving into and will bring scalability to Ecometry customers. Additionally, the envisioned environment will allow them to keep personalization and uniqueness's by customer. The move to a standard code base will begin sometime in September and following the release of the COBOL .NET version of Ecometry.

As the summit's theme was Thrive in the New Consumer Reality! Brian Johnson highlighted 5 key areas that can be considered by every organization. They include;

1. Capture Attention and Stand Out

a. Build a dialog with your customers
b. Push social media
c. Leverage coupons

a. Recognize loyalty
b. Provide rewards for loyalty i.e. points
c. Ask for feedback i.e. customer survey
d. Provide a coupon

a. Standard of mail, phone, fax, web will continue
b. New choices of mobile apps, EOF, Facebook

a. Let clients know you are trusted
b. Have or announce a privacy policy

a. Meet there expectation, they will surely come back
b. Track delivery
c. Provide on-line chat capabilities
d. Provide Video content on company and or products

Brian then presented what's coming in Ecometry version 10.2
- Loyalty points
- Better ESM Performance
- ESM Invoice Approval
- Clear Ticket and Cost Adjustment
- Partial Authorization and reversal
- Product URL Linking
- EWM (Ecometry Web Manager)

All of these enhancements are designed to improve the customer experience and make it easier to do business.

Some of the sessions focused on looking at data to understanding inventory, merchandising and the buying process. The questions posed include understanding the sales trends - is the item standalone or does it typically sell as part of a bundle. Where is it selling - catalog, web, store? What were the dollars generated versus the cost of goods, shipping, advertising (which media was used), insurance, warehouse space, returns, cancels - does this item have a net contribution to profit? What was the goal for the merchandise?

Other questions were around the subject of catalogs - do you need them anymore? The point was made that a catalog will often get 30 minutes of time from a browsing customer where the website would rarely or never get that much time/focus from a customer. What does it take to get conversation - Not everyone who gets a catalog is a good customer! Can you get a postcard to a customer and invite them to the website where they can browse and order a catalog for some money which would be refunded using a coupon at order time - thus only customers who are in a buying cycle would be getting a catalog.

The conference featured several social events - the fund raising poker tournament, and a Luau evening complete with Hawaiian costumed dancers. There was a game show "Are you smarter than an Ecometrist". Hosted by Todd Misemer where you could show off your Ecometry knowledge.

MB Foster was a conference sponsor, for those that visited us in our booth, they learnt of our Ecometry DataMarts and ODS (Operational Data Store) and how it can be used by every level of the organization to make corporate dashboards and measure KPI's (Key Performance Indicators).

We also discussed risk mitigation, strategies and our migration approach with several customers that are expecting to transition this year. As leading experts in surround code migrations we were happy to help define the road to success.

MB Foster also featured a special promotion for its MBF Scheduler for Windows solution - designed to help customers automate tasks easily on the Windows servers.

Finally, MB Foster gave away an iPad2 3G with Wi-Fi. The winner was Kim Wittig of Wayside Technologies.