BEST PRACTICE REPORTS:
DECISION TOOLS & OPINION PAPERS
One of the many benefits of membership in the UW E-Business Consortium is access to best practice guidelines to help your company make informed business decisions.
Decision Tools
Content Management Best Practices Checklist
This tool will help your company benchmark existing content management processes to best practices in industry, and provide leverage points to restructure and improve the process.
E-Mail Marketing Best Practices Checklist
This decision and management checklist tool provides best practices guidelines for the first phase of an email campaign. It should help marketers develop / plan effective email marketing campaigns including developing a test plan for the execute / deliver phase and developing a test plan for the measure / optimize phase. This tool can also be used to benchmark your company’s current email marketing practices.
Project Charter Template
This template helps structure the planning phase of an e-business project, and provides a framework to execute and monitor project initiatives to satisfy end users on time and within budget.
Opinion Papers
Key Account Management
In this opinion paper, UWEBC members share key account management strategies. This report includes general processes and information necessary to implement key account management.
Supplier Performance Management Best Practices
This Opinion Paper describes how the implementation of a strong SPM system can help service providers, manufacturing organizations, or any company that deals with business partners keep track of their suppliers, standardize measurement procedures over their enterprise, join forces with suppliers on setting and managing overall performance expectations, and automate key measurement activities.
Spyware & Adware: An Overview
Learn more about spyware and adware: the nature of the problem, the security risks and issues, and the actions that need to taken by corporate IT Security Management and individuals to combat them.
Inside Sales Strategies & Leading Practices
Inside sales has become an increasing popular strategy due to the major drawback with outside sales: travel. Inside sales solves this and other problems by replacing plane trips with phone calls, contacting customers world-wide in minutes instead of days, all while enjoying a continuous connection to the corporate information network.
Enterprise Instant Messaging
This paper helps IT managers and management executives understand business Instant Messaging (IM) security, solutions and best practices. It also provides a general overview of consumer and business IM.
Spam Filters: What Makes The Leaders Cook?
The performance of nine desktop and 14 enterprise spam filtering tools are analyzed based on accuracy of the filters and the number of false-positives (legitimate e-mail classified as spam).
UPCOMING 2005 BEST PRACTICE REPORTS
- E-Mail Security Technology Overview
- Inbound Logistics Best Practices
- Paid Search Marketing Strategy
- Desktop Search Tool Evaluation
- Viral Marketing Best Practices
Questions or Comments
Contact Shawn Helwig
UWEBC Peer Group Facilitator
608-261-1161
sbhelwig@wisc.edu
INDUSTRY - SPONSORED PROJECTS
UWEBC faculty, staff, and students work with member companies to conduct company-specific e-business projects related to their strategic e-business initiatives.
- CUNA Mutual Group and CUNA & Affiliates
- Grainger
- Pacific Cycle
- Sub-Zero Freezer Company
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"RFID Implementation - Anticipated Benefits Analysis"
UWEBC assisted Pacific Cycle’s management team to better understand the impact of RFID-enabled operational improvements. The project scope consisted of four key areas:
- Stock availability at Wal*Mart stores
- Wal*Mart charge back transaction analysis
- Inventory accuracy analysis
- Main warehousing process analysis.
- Impact on warehouse operations
- Impact on Wal*Mart related operations
Potential improvements were identified among all four key areas, and included efficiencies in lead time management, new verification of product delivery, decreased potential for backorders, and visibility of incoming containers. A baseline business case for RFID implementation was developed from this analysis.
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"Online Marketing: Effectiveness and Impact on the Credit Union Industry"
This study was commissioned by UWEBC members CUNA Mutual Group and CUNA & Affiliates, along with the CUNA Technology Council and the CUNA Marketing & Business Development Council. Research was conducted by the University of Wisconsin E-Business Consortium (UWEBC), in Madison.
The study found that credit union marketers no longer view offering online products and services as means of differentiating themselves from competitors, but as a necessity for doing business, according to a recentlyreleased research report on online marketing trends. And individuals who use online services are proving to be the most desirable members for credit unions.
Information gathering and analysis methods included an online survey, a focus group with eight credit union executives, and in-depth case studies.
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Search Marketing: Paid Search
UWEBC assisted Grainger to:
- Increase return on marketing investment through higher rankings on Google and Overture
- Reduce new customer acquisition costs for click-through customers from Google and Overture
- Develop a streamlined process for selection of keywords for Overture and Google
UWEBC helped identify the methodology, implementation, and key improvements needed to develop a paid search strategy. First, Grainger’s key customer segments, top product and brand categories for each customer were identified. Then, we distinguished high-frequency keywords based on historical performance, and developed a bid strategy for Google and Overture. Finally, we monitored the performance of keywords based on click-throughs, conversion rates, ROI, customer acquisition cost and recommended improvements based on results.
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Sub-Zero Freezer Company CRM Project
Sub-Zero/Wolf’s CRM Project Strategy:
- Identify, create, maintain, and grow profitable, long-lasting, and mutually beneficial customer relationships
- Drive a shift towards a more customer-centric culture
- Enhance the customer experience at all touchpoints
- Enrich channel partner interactions
- Implement a set of measurable technology-enabled business processes
UWEBC assisted the Sub-Zero Freezer Company with requirements gathering and contact center software selection
- Evaluated CRM drivers
- Mapped processes to identify software requirements
- Developed RFP’s
- Created demo scripts
- Researched contact center and CRM vendors
- Interviewed customers about product registration behavior
Questions or Comments
Contact Alfonso Gutierrez,
Assistant Director, Research & Education, UW EBusiness
Consortium
608-262-5690
agutierr@wisc.edu



