Press Release

October 2004

Manutan and its 16 European Subsidiaries use exalead one:enterprise for their Electronic Catalog

Thanks to Exalead, since July 2004, Manutan has been providing their European internet customers with a new search service for their electronic catalogs. Faster and more interactive, this new Exalead service will boost the e-commerce strategy of this European leader by improving their internet sales process in Europe.

A single search request gives access to 80 000 products for the French market, and more than 300 000 European products.

MANUTAN'S objective was to acquire a simple and efficient service capable of orienting every web customer, no matter their profile or knowledge of the Web, to the product they want.

While most search engines only provide a list of search results, exalead one:enterprise also provides automatic clustering in real time that users simple click to activate. Now it is no longer necessary to know the exact name of an article beforehand, nor do users have to blindly explore the site map: Exalead's search engine automatically presents pertinent themes such as the main categories in which found articles are classified. By clicking a theme, the customer can freely navigate through the results. If need be, a did-you-mean spelling correction system orients customers to the content they are looking for.

Designed with the ever more demanding user in mind, exalead one:enterprise considerably reduces the number of searches that yield no results or poor results, and as such, it keeps customers loyal to this tool and to using Manutan's electronic catalog.

Chosen not only for its ease of use, but also for its technology

By choosing Exalead, MANUTAN opted for innovative technology with lots of potential to adapt to their current and future needs. Capable of indexing all types of information sources (Oracle in this case), including large sources, the Exalead platform can serve dozens of simultaneous requests, even with a minimal installation while maintaining a response time of less than a second. This satisfies users who often abandon their search if the search engine does not meet their expectations.

And when it comes to implementation and operation, Manutan made the most of this platform's flexibility to build in a few weeks that met its needs and those of its European subsidiaries.

Rapid implementation in the 16 subsidiaries

This service gives direct and intelligent access to MANUTAN Group's electronic catalog content already in France, the UK, the Netherlands, and will be soon implemented within Manutan's 16 other European subsidiaries.

exalead one:enterprise is natively multilingual making it ready for use in all the countries in which Manutan is present while adapting to the unique qualities of each language. Spelling correction and word stemming are examples of the many functions integrated into exalead one:enterprise based on statistical methods that work with all Indo-European languages.

Implementation of this service in France and Europe took less than two months - a record time to bring up an industrial tool with twenty different configurations, each with their own identity!

The MANUTAN group listened to their customers who were unsatisfied with their previous search engine, "A constant customer request was for us to improve our search engine. With Exalead, we found the best answer.", summarized a Manutan manager. "We are looking forward to see the impact of Exalead on our sales: Fewer searches where no results are found, a navigation system that accompanies and guides users to products in our catalog thereby improving our sales conversion rate."