eXalt has made B2B rules engines for IT companies for years, but has now revamped their offering for the digital era to adjust to modern customer preferences and buying patterns.

Boston-based eXalt Solutions has announced the commercial availability of their Knowledge Work-as-a Service (KWaaS) cloud platform, the next-gen version of their B2B rules engine.

“We have been in business, serving IT channel companies for 15 years, helping them improve their internal operation with our customized rules engines,” said Leslie Swanson, eXalt’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Two years ago, we realized the whole market is shifting because of digital transformation. We had to rethink what we do, to focus on the initial point of advisement, and on self service.

eXalt makes digital advisors, rules engines with user friendly front ends that can be customized, and which are capable of handling complex sales orders for solution sales. They fit into a couple of different classification buckets – Business Process Outsourcing, and Customer Experience. Their customers include vendors like Intel and distributors like Jenne.

“Intel’s server division been a customer for years,” Swanson said. “They have high-end storage and server solutions, including all the third-party compatible vendors, where our software can figure out for the customer what the proper solution is.”

Swanson said that B2B buying is, however, in the process of fundamental change.

“The issue today is that companies in B2B have to transform themselves,” Swanson said. “Customers want more self serve in B2B like in B2C. So companies have to change the way they interact with the customer in the front office and speed everything up. Today’s IT sales process is a high touch manual one, with dozens of manual steps. The sales person is now a routing machine to engineers. Customer buying patterns are also changing, with much more research on their own, and sales reps often aren’t contacted until two thirds of the way through the decision-making process. Today, you have to change the front end of your business to add more value while providing more structure.”

Accordingly, in the last year eXalt re-architected its platform to specifically address Knowledge Work Automation in the enterprise, increasing and enhancing automation. The idea is to implement a complete end-to-end fabric of Digital Threads from Sales through Delivery, in which Digital Labor takes over the rules-based repetitive tasks.

“Our prior platform was focused more on the inside of the four walls,” Swanson said. “It could advise customers, but it wasn’t as smart as this. It also wasn’t consciously focused on customer experience. This one is all about self-serve. It can glean more patterns much earlier from customer input, and can then make decisions and act on them.

“We see the future as very different from the past, and while we have always worked in the technology sector, we see much more scale in actually leveraging its technology,” Swanson added.

eXalt’s KWaaS platform allows marketing, eCommerce or operational executives to specify business rules changes, which eXalt then loads into its cloud platform without any software or IT involvement. The Digital Advisors provide buyers with smarter ways to shop and solve their problems, while Digital Analysts use predictive intelligence to gain visibility and take action, and Digital Administrators make businesses more connected internally and externally to gain agility

“eProcurement is good for buying paper clips, but IT solutions need advisement,” Swanson said. “Any size vendor or distributor can use this to get scale. It’s applicable to even the smallest reseller.” Their pricing charges by the transaction for smaller organizations, and offers an unlimited plan for large enterprises.