This aspect has obviously gained particular relevance in the CRM area. Leveraging the Web, the enterprise saves manpower to support the interactions, and the customer benefits from convenient, time-efficient and around-the-clock services. Plus the web-channel opens up a palette of possibilities for effective cross-selling and innovative ways of creating added value towards the customer. Web channels are nowadays considered a significant if not crucial aspect of customer relationship management.

Web channel integration from a technical aspect can be seen as a combination of content and services that are aggregated and channeled by a portal framework. The portal framework implements the presentation (stylesheets etc.), authentication and authorization, personalization, navigation, and other strictly contentindependent functionality.

The applications that provide the content and services to the user through the portal can be various, but in the context of CRM these can roughly be split into the following domains.

• eServices, allowing the user to self-service his/her information, place online orders or requests, download brochures and forms, etc. and at the same time offer the enterprise the medium to provide more outbound oriented information services (e.g. stock information, etc.).
• eCommerce, allowing the enterprise to activate the Internet as an extra sales channel. eCommerce provides an online store with functionalities such as a product catalogue, shopping carts, online payment, special promotions, 1:1 marketing, etc.
• Content management provides the infrastructure to publish company and product information, marketing information, news-feeds, etc.

This way of looking at the web channel permits us to find the right technology for each component in the channel.

eServices
Implementing the eServices stream can be done in a couple of ways, and typically depends on whether or not a front-office focused CRM system already exists inside the organization, how easy it is to integrate into such a system, and of course whether requirements and integration needs are general or very specific in nature.

The benefit of leveraging existing CRM software to implement the web channel is particularly apparent in the case of inbound customer self-service applications that need to plug into your inhouse CRM processes. Examples of such functionality are maintenance of customer information (e.g. address changes), viewing billing data and placing online orders. The information exchange between your CRM software and your self service channel is greatly facilitated by a common data model, the same technology stack, identical web services, and compatible workflows.

eCommerce
Customer portals that have a strongly marketing or sales focused mission will benefit more from specialized products that provide product catalogues, promotions and campaigns, online stores, shopping carts, online payment and many more specifically targeted functions. The open source community provides products in this area, with eCommerce platforms like OFBiz, OSCommerce, or a more content-management focused application like eZ publish.

Content Management
Open source has produced a great variety of strong document- and content management products. These applications bear considerable relevance also in the area of CRM, allowing your organization to maintain the more static kind of information for the web channel: company- and product information, brochure-ware, news. But also blogs, wikis and other modern, more interactive content management technologies fall in this category.

The Optaros white paper "Content Management Problems and Open Source Solutions"  covers the most prominent players in detail.