News & Events

MyBuys Messenger - Fall 2009

Partnering for Added Value—Interview with Fred Mondragon

Essentially, the job of Fred Mondragon, Senior Director Business Development at MyBuys, is to build relationships and ensure MyBuys integrates well with all complementary technologies.. By doing that, he delivers new capabilities to MyBuys clients and expands the usefulness of MyBuys personalized recommendations.

Leveraging Deep Profiles in Several Channels

Prior to joining MyBuys, Fred worked at Oracle and Netscape and was Director of Business Development at Escalate Retail, which sold e-commerce software. He uses that e-commerce background at MyBuys to identify opportunities to work with partners that will add value to MyBuys' leading personalized product recommendation services.

Fred's focus is on creating alliances with other technology and service providers, which enables MyBuys clients to take advantage of other best-of-breed solutions in the market. The services these companies offer are complementary to MyBuys and can be easily integrated, making it simple for clients to add new capabilities for product ratings and reviews, e-commerce, search, email marketing, consulting, and call centers.

"Adding these capabilities expands the usefulness of our recommendations," says Mondragon. "It also differentiates us from other personalization services because the way our service is built, we're able to take full advantage of the data feeds we get from partners. By combining that with our deep profiles, it makes our recommendations even more relevant and valuable in other channels, such as the email or call center channel. Other personalization companies don't build the deep profiles, so their recommendations are not individualized, which means they're not as effective."

Supporting a Range of Technologies

In addition, says Mondragon, MyBuys has more partners in specific categories than other personalization services. With some 30 partners, clients will almost always find that MyBuys has a partner that supports the key technologies they are using or plan to adopt.

As for how he selects partner companies, Mondragon says some are natural partners. E-commerce platform providers, for instance, are important because they enable a client to use the MyBuys service. At the beginning of the relationship with such a partner, MyBuys helps determine costs and methods of integration, then leverages that experience to efficiently roll out similar integrations for other customers of that platform.

"The most rewarding part of the job," says Mondragon, "is meeting with others in the retail space and figuring out together how to solve problems, deliver new capabilities, and create value. The job is also interesting because there's an element of selling, of marketing and of technology integration."

Mondragon says that working with partners also creates a greater presence in the marketplace for MyBuys: "It helps to get the word out through partners that like us and understand how our service can benefit their customers—just as we understand how their products and services can benefit MyBuys' clients."

Away from his job of forming partnerships, Fred enjoys going on outings with his wife and three children, and is a confessed audiophile, with an actual record player and stereo system. Now if only he could get his kids to listen to more classical music and fewer Disney soundtracks…