| E-commerce: |
| Much has been discussed
about e-commerce. |
| Many claims have been
made about the impact it will have. |
| Paper and some real fortunes
have been made on the back of a dotcom boom that in so many cases has turned
to bust. |
| This page aims to provide
an understanding of one of the most important business topics today. |
| By cutting through the
jargon and the hype, and by looking at both the mistakes and the seemingly
inspired moves that have been made so far by those seeking to get ahead
in this brave new business world, it provides a clear picture of the real
potential of e-commerce and how it can be harnessed. |
| " The gap between what
we can imagine and what we can achieve has never been smaller " |
| E-business knowledge
is generally inversely proportional to both age and rank in the organisation
- Jack Welch, General Electric |
| There will be nothing
in the 10-year window except e-companies. That does not mean that Brick-and-Mortar
will go away, But Click-and Mortar will become the only means of survival
- John Chambers, Cisco Systems. |
| Better to do five things
at 100% than ten things at 80%. And while we have to move very, very, very
fast, I think you are not well served by moving incredibly rapidly and
not doing thing that well - Meg Whitman, eBay. |
| It is like a new continent
- The Deeper we go, the more we know about it, but the difference between
the internet and, say, Africa is that the internet is changing under our
feet - One month it looks like a garden and the next month it looks
like a wasteland - Jiri Hlavenka, Czech Internet entrepreneur |
| This is just a catalogue
retail business with lower barriers to enter, margins, if they ever materialise,
will always be crummy - Michael Murphy, American High-tech investor. |
| The Gap between what
we can imagine and what we can achieve has never been smaller - Gary Hamel,
Management Guru |
| What's my ROI on E-commerce?
Are you crazy? This is Columbus in the new world. What was his ROI ? -
Andy Grove, Intel |
| What is e-commerce ? |
| E-commerce, is the buying
and selling of goods and services on the internet, especially the World
Wide Web. |
| Clearly, the influence
of the web is much wider than this when taken in its commercial context. |
| E-business is sometimes
used as another term for the same process. |
| More often, though, it
is used to define a broader process of how the internet is changing the
way companies do business, of the way they relate to their customers and
suppliers, and of the way they think about such functions as marketing
and logistics. |
| Some Useful websites
for News and Information on E-commerce: |
| E-commerce
Times |
| The
Economist |
| Business
Week |
| Financial
Times |
| The
New York Times |
| Red
Herring |
| The
Standard |
| The
Wall Street Journal |
| Internet.com |
| News.com |
| Organisations: |
| Commerce.net |
| EFF.org |
| IETF.org |
| ISOC.org |
| Terms of E-commerce and
Keys to E-company & E-business: |
| Business to Business
(B2B) |
| The exchange of goods,
services, imformation or money between businesses over the Internet. |
| B2B was proclaimed th
enext big thing after B2C lost some of its attraction. |
| By Implementing B2B solutions,
businesses can make huge savings, cutting down stocks and strearlining
operations by sharing information across their networks of partners and
suppliers. |
| The exchanges that sprang
up in the B2B area can be divided into three types: |
| Industry-driven |
| Independent upstarts |
| Private e-marketplaces. |
| Business to Consumer
(B2C) |
| The exchange of goods
and services between businesses and consumers over the Internet. B2C marked
the beginning of the commercialisation of the Internet, but the sector
failed to live up to its promise. |
| Many B2C companies learned
to their cost that attracting customers to a website is one thing, but
ensuring their visit ends in a purchase is quite different. |
| Fulfilment and delivery
problems also abound. |
| Successful B2C Players
include companies selling low-touch, standardised items like books, CDS
and DVDS. |
| Travel services have
also proved popular, and many people now buy their plane tickets online. |
| Bricks and Mortar: |
| A tradional company wit
no online presence, as opposed to a pure-play company that exists almost
exclusively on the Internet. Heavily crticised for their reluctance to
embrace the Internet, most big companies and industry behemoths now have
some sort of web presence and are increasingly seen as the dominant online
players, with their established brands and loyal customers. |
| Clicks and Mortar: |
| A business using a mixture
of offline and online sales and distribution channels. |
| A good example is Branes
& Noble, a traditional high-street bookseller that was forced to embrace
the Internet following the success of online-only competitor Amazon.com |
| The company sought to
integrate its new channel bn.com with its
bookstores. |
| As e-commerce evolved,
Amazon.com along with other pure-plays, moved closer to the clicks-and-mortar
models by building infrastructure (bricks) behind the online interface
(clicks). |
| Disintermediation: |
| A word borrowed from
the banking world that describes how the internet brings buyers and sellers
closer together, allowing them to complete transactions without the use
of a middleman. |
| It was initially thought
that the Internet would make masses of people in services industries redundant. |
| However, a new type of
middleman, an infomediary, soon emerged with the ability to pool
information from sites and systmes, offering better deals for customers.
- e.g. Priceline.com |
| How to be an e-manager
? |
| 1. Speed - The list could,
perhaps, stop right here. Being quick is more important than being large
- indeed, large companies find it hard to be speedy. " There are very few
things that the Internet slow down " |
| 2. Good People - Human
beings are the most important of all corporate inputs. |
| 3. Openness - The open
nature of the Internet drives its success. |
| 4. Collaboration skills
- The Internet creates many new opportunities for teams and companies to
work together. |
| 5. Discipline - Can this
go with creativity and openness? |
| 6. Good communications
- Given the pace and complexity of change, communicating strategy matters
more than ever. |
| 7. Content-management
skillls - All those websites that companies design to reach their staff,
their customers or their corporate partners almost always start off by
carrying far too much information. |
| 8. Customer focus - New
opportunities have opened for companies to deepen their relations with
customers. |
| 9. Knowledge Management
- The communications revolution has raised the importance of pooling the
skills and knowledge of a workforce. |
| 10. Leadership by example
- Plenty of bosses, especially in Europe and Asia, do not know how to use
the Internet, and wear their ignorance as a badge of honour. But chief
executives who have never done their own e-mail, or bought something online,
or spent an evening or two looking at their competitors' websites, are
endangering their businesses. Top-level management must spend real political
capital to create e-business, |
| Armed with these ten
essentials, Old-economy managers should see the challenge ahead for what
it is: the most revolutionary period they have ever experienced in corporate
life. It will be frightening and exhausting, but it will also be enormously
exciting. It may even be fun. |
| How to turn your website
into a " Money Machine " ? |
| The Internet is creating
a new business economy in which some rules are changing while many remain
the same. No one in the world of enterprise can ignore the growth of e-commerce
or remain ignorant of its potential and pitfalls. |
| In this fast-paced life
you need a convenient, easy and time-effective way of becoming informed. |
| It provides a clear understanding
of how the internet, investment in technology and e-commerce work, whilst
highlighting: |
| The business opportunities
and pitfalls of an Internet presence. |
| How best to exploit technological
resources for sustainable profit |
| A Range of answers that
fit with and enhance the business person's overall business and marketing
strategy. |
| Key questions of E-commerce: |
| Why is the Internet unlikely
to be a business fad that will fade as quickly as it emerged? |
| How fast is the web growing? |
| How fast is e-commerce
growing? |
| Where is the greatest
growth likely to be? |
| Who is succeeding online? |
| What are the business
barriers to growth? |
| Are investors really
losing their shirts online? |
| What is the role of technology? |
| What do " Coal Face "
managers need to know about the Internet? |
| What are the new rules
of the " new economy "? |
| What is wrong with traditional
marketing techniques? |
| Why can't I simply delegate
the desisions to the technical and marketing experts that we have in-house? |
| Why does online business
seem to flourish when part of a " bricks and clicks " enterprise? |
| What is the difference
between " e-commerce " and " e-business"? |
| Is the Internet likely
to become a preferred medium for training? |
| What are Lambert's Laws
of Training? |
| How much money is wasted
on training? |
| Is it simply a matter
of being first to market with a creative idea? |
| Can companies make solid
fortunes out of merely building a customer database? |
| What is the cost of inadequate
planning? |
| Have any of the big names
in e-commerce really thought it through or are they all part of an enormous
dot com bubble? |
| How should online and
offlineshopping experience relate? |
| Why does European e-commerce
continue to lag behind that of the USA? |
| Why is market dominance
essential? |
| How Flexible should an
online domiance strategy be? |
| What is a dominance strategy
in e-commerce terms? |
| So the key is not just
tohave an Internet strategy, but to extend that into a market dominance
strategy? |
| What are the key steps
towards a market dominance strategy, online or off? |
| How do we indentify new
opportunities? What are the global trends? |
