Outsourced online community building

It takes a community to build a Web business, experts say. If a company can't nourish one itself, Participate.com is happy to help. Growing a business on the Internet often is defined by the three C' s. Two of them, commerce and content, receive a lot of attention. The third component, community, is the least visible of the three, but it's likely to develop quickly as major companies seek efficient ways to build new online relationships with their customers, among their employees and with other businesses. Companies with neither the time nor expertise to establish, promote and maintain online relationships can hire the task out to a new breed of companies such as Chicago-based Participate.com. The community management umbrella actually covers a variety of areas. They include: data mining and analysis to track Web site browsing and purchasing patterns; customer relationship management, which processes e-mail and builds customer profiles; and development and maintenance of technology tools (forums, bulletin boards, message boards) that connect a site with its customers, connect employees with one another and connect the company with other businesses. Participate.com's online community management tasks can include creating and launching personal employee home pages, offering analysis of user trends based on traffic to the site, using an employee volunteer who expresses interest in taking an active role in moderating forum discussions, or creating a business-to-business forum for a company wishing to connect with its partners, vendors or fellow professionals. Sales of Web site analysis and data mining software are expected to climb to $132 million by 2001 from $29 million in 1998, according to International Data Corp., a market research firm. At the same time, analysts at Meta Group estimates that demand for customer relationship management systems will grow to $4.7 billion in 2001 from $1.5 billion in 1998.