Web Services: An Emergent Opportunity for Customer Prospecting

One of the most difficult tasks for organizations is customer prospecting. This activity alone will often determine if a new venture will succeed or fail. It is also critical to the marketing activity of established firms. The effectiveness of the usual marketing techniques for prospecting and targeting customers methods as well as their limitations are discussed. In the light of this, the question of how emergent web services technologies can further enable businesses in this crucial marketing activity, is examined. The paper explicates the functioning of this new ICT infrastructure and goes on to discuss its potential for customer prospecting. Current misunderstandings about the nature of web services is clarified and dispelled. The use of XML based software, such as, WSDL, UDDI and SOAP, is presented, as the basis for this emergent infrastructure. The architecture is presented for a non-technical audience, with a view to showing how it can be used to realize new business opportunities rather than from a purely scientific perspective. The current gaps in the market and opportunities for service providers and brokers to provide the necessary business services to make the new technological infrastructure fully viable, are also assessed.