ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc., NASDAQ: ARTG), whose e-commerce suite powers more top online sellers than any other, today announced the launch of its first e-Commerce Ingenuity Business Plan Competition, which will award the winner a prize of $50,000 in cash. A second "People's Choice" winner will receive $10,000 in cash as a result of a public vote on the company's blog, "e-Commerce Insights," http://www.ecommerceinsights.com. Submissions, which must include an e-commerce element as a business-critical component of the success of the plan, will be judged on the inventiveness and creativity of their proposals, as well as on long-term business viability and likelihood of execution. The winner will be chosen by a panel of software and technology experts, influential industry leaders and business executives to be announced at a later date. All entries must be received by 5:00 pm ET on Wednesday, January 30, 2008.
"Our business plan competition offers aspiring e-commerce entrepreneurs the unique opportunity to have their business ideas evaluated and recognized by a panel of experts who know this industry inside and out and are setting its future direction," said Bob Burke, president and CEO of ATG. "Through the first e-commerce boom and the resurgence of the past few years, ATG has put great value on vision and innovation, both business and technical, as a vehicle to help our customers grow and be successful online. As an extension to this commitment, ATG is thrilled to provide an outlet for new voices to share their own ideas about what e-commerce will look like in the future."
The ATG e-Commerce Ingenuity Business Plan Competition is open to individuals or teams of e-commerce entrepreneurs, as well as seed or early-stage companies. To qualify as seed or early-stage, annual revenues or monies raised to date must be less than $100,000. Employees of ATG or its affiliates, volunteers, and their immediate family members and/or those living in same household of each are not eligible.
Examples of encouraged submission concepts could include:
- New technology offerings to attract and retain specific customer segments
- New solutions for creating loyal communities of e-commerce consumers
- Visionary user-interface developments or approaches to personalized e-commerce experiences
- Vehicles to deliver cutting-edge e-commerce experiences to new industries
To enter the competition, each individual or team must submit a completed "Competition Submission" form as found at www.atg.com/ingenuity/.
Three finalists, announced in March 2008, will be required to present their full business plans to the panel of judges and deliver their summary presentations to an audience of e-commerce leaders, Web merchants, analysts, investors and ATG partners at ATG's annual user-conference, ATG Insight Live 2008, to be held in Boston, April 27-30, 2008. The winners will be announced and awarded the prizes during the event.
For more information about the ATG e-Commerce Ingenuity Business Plan Competition, please visit www.atg.com/ingenuity.
About ATG
ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc., NASDAQ: ARTG) makes the software and delivers the on demand solutions that the world's most customer-conscious companies use to power their e-commerce web sites, attract prospects, convert them to buyers and ensure their satisfaction so they become loyal, repeat, profitable customers. Our e-commerce suite is ranked the #1 current offering and #1 in strategy by the industry's most influential analyst firms, and powers more of the top 300 internet retailers than any other vendor. Our eStara brand provides customer interaction solutions to enhance conversions and customer support, and delivers the world's most widely used click-to-call service. ATG's solutions are used by over 900 major brands, including Amazon, American Eagle Outfitters, AOL, AT&T, Best Buy, B&Q, Cabela's, Carrefour, Coca Cola, Continental Airlines, CVS, Dell, DirecTV, El Corte Ingles, Expedia, France Telecom, Harvard Business School Publishing, Hewlett-Packard, Hilton, HSBC, Intuit, Jenny Craig, Macy's, Meredith, Microsoft, Neiman Marcus, New York & Company, Nokia, NutriSystem, OfficeMax, PayPal, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Sears, Sony, Symantec, Target, T-Mobile, Tommy Hilfiger, Urban Outfitters, Verizon, Viacom, Vodafone and Walgreens. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with additional locations throughout North America and Europe. For more information about ATG, please visit www.atg.com.
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This press release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause ATG's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important risk factors affecting ATG's business generally may be found in its periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. Risk factors related to the subject matter of this press release include the possibility that the ATG product deployment will not be successful, on time or significantly enhance the user's Internet experience or will not increase customer revenue across brands; that those customers leveraging ATG will not have the opportunity to increase revenue and decrease future costs; the need to adapt to rapid changes so products do not become obsolete; the possibility of errors in ATG's software products; the possibility that the solution will not make customer implementations faster or more flexible or permit the customer to meet its customer-facing or infrastructure requirements; that the ATG product will not continue to be integrated with third party applications servers or will not support all Web services enabled systems; that ATG's product strategy may change in the future; and the risks and costs of intellectual property litigation. ATG undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.
