Endeca Technologies, which offers information access software, is releasing an online retail merchandising management tool suite.

Announced June 9, the Merchandising Workbench performs a variety of merchandising tasks for use in e-commerce stores.

"Imagine you have a store where hand trucks are running all around and items are rearranged on the fly," said Matt Eichner, senior vice president of strategic development for Endeca. "Now imagine you're the poor merchandiser in this store that is rearranging itself every split second. Where do you put the end caps, and what items do you fill them with?"

Eichner said this scenario essentially describes the difficulties merchandisers face in online retailing, where assortments change with each customer, or even with the same customer depending on how that person clicks through the site. According to Eichner, Merchandising Workbench performs three core activities to help online merchandisers stay on top of their duties: producing the right search results, promoting the right items and triggering special branding.

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