Endeca,a Cambridge, Mass., enterprise search engine, has signed a deal with Quixtar, a Grand Rapids, Mich., health and beauty products seller. Neither the value of the deal, nor its duration, was disclosed.
Four-year-old Quixtar will use Endeca’s Infront product to improve Web site search and navigation on its Web site.
“(Endeca’s technology) is flexible enough to accommodate a variety of user search approaches, and interactive enough to provide precise results,” said Randy Bancino, Quixtar’s CIO.
Endeca targets several sectors including retail, financial services, manufacturing, information publishing and business-to-business. Its customers include Barnes & Noble, Putnam Investments, and Arrow Electronics.
For retail customers such as Quixtar, Endeca’s dynamic merchandising functionality, will be used to display related items based on individual users’ queries.
Privately held Endeca is backed by leading venture capital firms including Ampersand Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and Venrock Associates. It is also an IBM partner and is a preferred provider of Big Blue’s WebSphere Commerce Group.
Although paid placement has grabbed most of the headlines in the search sector, Endeca and other search firms, such as iPhrase and Aks Jeeves, have been winning jobs to improve online customer service sections.
Companies say the software saves money by deflecting calls to service representatives.