ATG to Hold First Ever E-Commerce Ingenuity Business Plan Competition

E-commerce solutions provider ATG (Art Technology Group (News - Alert), Inc.) is holding its first e-Commerce Ingenuity Business Plan Competition, in which business executives can compete for a grand prize of $50,000 in cash.

A second “People’s Choice” winner will receive $10,000.

Winners will be chosen by a panel of software and technology experts, influential industry leaders and business executives, who will cast a public vote on the company’s blog, “e-Commerce Insights.”

Winners will be judged on the “inventiveness and creativity of their proposals, as well as on long-term business viability and likelihood of execution” (obviously, such criteria are somewhat subjective). Submissions must include an e-commerce element as a business-critical component of the success of the plan.

All entries must be received by 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, January 30, 2008. Winners will be announced in March 2008 and the prizes will be given at ATG’s annual user-conference, ATG Insight Live 2008, to be held in Boston, April 27-30, 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, in a press release. “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 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.

Recommended concepts 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

 

Submission forms are available at www.atg.com/ingenuity/.

For more information about ATG, visit www.atg.com.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine and Assignment Editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.