Running a ERP  or e-Business web based application isn't like running old flat faceless DOS or UNIX systems, neither its like running resource hungry slow windows applications. Your audience is potentially vast and diverse, and chances are, you won't be successful offering the same experience to each user. A teenage cheerleader from Dallas may visit your e-Business one day, a programmer from the Phillippines the next. Two such visitors have different needs and tastes, and likely have only one thing in common: If appealing content or merchandise isn't immediately available, or if they have spend more than a few seconds searching for it, they'll quickly move to other or competitors e-Businesses. You could attempt to create a e-Business site that appeals to everyone, pointing each visitor to the same general content or merchandise, but that solution might be too generic to please anyone. You'd lose the ability to target narrow markets. The place where people do not understand English needs e-Business applications in local languages. If you do not target this segment you may loose the ability to target local markets.  You could design a e-Business site solely for the cheerleader or solely for programmer, but that would eliminate much of your audience. A site that combines the specific pages for cheerleaders and programmers is likely to be confusing. 

The most important benefit of personalizing your e-Business is to give your customers feel that you're a local company situated very near to you. It helps to draw more customers in, and ultimately not only do they register with your e-Business site but they purchase also. 

There are various types of personalization possible in e-Business:

1. Local Language based Personalization: This tool allows your e-Business can be operated in multiple languages around the globe. The technology used to achieve this is called DHTML CSS - Cascaded Style Sheets. ERPWEB can provide this.

2. GUI based Personalization: This tool helps you to customize every screen backgrounds, text colors & screen layouts can be modified by user from available set of GUI Desktop templates.  The technology used to achieve this is called DHTML CSS - Cascaded Style Sheets. ERPWEB can provide this also.

3. Role based Personalization: Every user operate e-Business as per rights of their access to system using this tool.  The technology used to achieve this is called dynamic Menu builder or Role based Portal Builder. ERPWEB provides this using workflow manager.

4. E-Analytics based Personalization: An e-analytics engine gives you information to help you update and improve your e-Business site. Such engines collect specific data about your site's visitors, observing what pages they access and what items they purchase, and occasionally asking them direct questions. It then analyzes that data and generates reports that explain the site's effectiveness - or lack thereof. e.g. this type of feature can find when customers buy certain products on a first-time visit, the chances of them becoming repeat customers next time. It also helps you to identify who are your best customers, and how can you better serve those customers - as well as who are your mediocre customers, who are the customers who are or may be costing money. These analytical tool can help you customize your e-Business interface with those users automatically. The Technology used to build this reporting is by using web server log file as data source for usage pattern analysis. Cookies can also be used to find what they accessed last time. Another way of gathering information is through a separate application with specific questionnaire which can be set for target user to answer. e.g. Many website asks you to rate the document & judges users likes or dislikes about particular documents. Thus there are various ways of monitoring users action. This things are provided by many internet service provides. Please contact them if you want to purchase one for your own website. ERPWEB will provide this features in version 3.

5.Rules based Personalization: One way to make use of the information from an analytics tool as mentioned above is to install a rules based personalization engine. Rules based engines customize a page's content not by determining the personal habits or interests of a current user but by consulting a set of rules defined by the site's designers. For example, one rule could be that your site shows product B to any customer who purchases product C, the two products being related in some way. ERPWEB will provide this feature in version 3 along with Agent technology.

6. Collaborative Filtering based Personalization: More extensive personalization is available through collaborative filtering, which determines a user's preferences, identifies groups of individuals who have similar preferences, and then serves the user additional content enjoyed by members of those groups. This translates behaviors into preferences and based on these preferences make recommendations for other things you would like, or even change the menus on a site so that it's more personalized to users. Initially, this type of engine collects data much the same way as an analytical tool would but on a simpler level. When user visits your e-Business site, the engine learns about the user on the fly and keeps a detailed record of what it's learned for future use. It typically collects data in two different ways. "One of the ways is of course to ask them, 'What do you think about following products?', 'Rate the following CDs,' or 'Tell us what you like to do for the weekend'." Typically this is done when the user is registering at the site or is making a purchase. Mainly, however, the engine records the pages users searches or accesses and the products they buy - all this with a simple artificial intelligence based expert system inference engine program which simply watch what you do. Whenever users visit, the engine learns more, and eventually it develops a fairly accurate representation of the habits and tastes of each users. When a user returns, the engine compares the user's profile with all the other collected profiles and identifies a group of individuals with similar habits and tastes. It then assumes the user will respond to additional pages or merchandise that have gotten a response from other members of this group. "If you seem interested in buying a coat, and you're looking at leather jackets, as soon as you make a few clicks, the collaborative engine can find other folks in the database who have looked at coats and leathers. You can learn about those customers comments on what you are buying. " ERPWEB will provide this feature in version 3 along with Agent technology.

7. Instant Personalization: Of course, with collaborative filtering, you can't provide personalization at the moment a user logs into your e-Business for the first time. You must wait until a user makes few clicks or answers some questions. For immediate personalization the system should have software tool which identifies a users country, local languages, GDP & buying power, Currency & exchange rate, Browser used, PC used, operating system used etc. Based on this data the system should automatically generate documents based on this users profiles. For example, lets say a customer from china who is using 486 machine and Linux and Netscape browser is logging onto your e-Business to purchase your products. The problem is this person uses knows very little English and prefers content in Mandarin Chinese. The instant personalization engine produces content suitable for his browser and in a language suitable to this Chinese user based on rules set in the engine. ERPWEB will provide this feature in version 3 along with .NET technology. ERPWEB version 3 will be fully build on .NET Technology.