Direct Marketing, Selling, and Service

Today, more Web sites focus on direct marketing, selling, and service than on any other type of electronic commerce. Direct selling was the earliest type of electronic commerce, and has proven to be a stepping-stone to more complex commerce operations for many companies. Successes such as Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Dell Computer, and the introduction of e-tickets by major airlines, have catalyzed the growth of this segment, proving the reach and customer acceptance of the Internet. Across consumer-targeted commerce sites, there are several keys to success:

• Marketing that creates site visibility and demand, targets customer segments with personalized offers, and generates qualified sales leads through observation and analysis of customer behavior.

• Sales-enhancing site design that allows personalized content and adaptive selling processes that do more than just list catalog items.

• Integrated sales-processing capabilities that provide secure credit card authorization and payment, automated tax calculation, flexible fulfillment, and tight integration with existing backend systems, such as inventory, billing, and distribution.

• Automated customer service features that generate responsive feedback to consumer inquiries, capture and track information about consumer requests, and automatically provide customized services based on personal needs and interests

• This business-to-consumer (B2C) electronic commerce increases revenue by reaching the right customers more often. Targeted and automated up-selling and cross-selling are the new fundamentals of online retailing. Sites that most frequently provide the best and most appropriate products and services are rewarded with stronger customer relationships, resulting in improved loyalty and increased value.

Financial and Information Services

A broad range of financial and information services are performed over the Internet today, and sites that offer them are enjoying rapid growth. These sites are popular because they help consumers, businesses of all sizes, and financial institutions distribute some of their most important information over the Internet with greater convenience and richness than is available using other channels. For example, you have:

• Online banking

• Online billing

• Secure information distribution

Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO)

The Internet also offers tremendous time and cost savings for corporate purchasing of low-cost, high-volume goods for maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) activities. Typical MRO goods include office supplies (such as pens and paper), office equipment and furniture, computers, and replacement parts. The Internet can transform corporate purchasing from a labor- and paperwork-intensive process into a self-service application. Company employees can order equipment on Web sites, company officials can automatically enforce purchase approval and policies through automated business rules, and suppliers can keep their catalog information centralized and up-to-date. Purchase order applications can then use the Internet to transfer the order to suppliers. In response, suppliers can ship the requested goods and invoice the company over the Internet. In addition to reduced administrative costs, Internet-based corporate purchasing can improve order-tracking accuracy, better enforce purchasing policies, provide better customer and supplier service, reduce inventories, and give companies more power in negotiating exclusive or volume-discount contracts. In other words, the Internet and e-business have changed the way enterprises serve customers and compete with each other, and have heightened awareness for competing supply chains.

Value Chain Integration

No other business model highlights the need for tight integration across suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors quite like the value chain. Delays in inventory tracking and management can ripple from the cash register all the way back to raw material production, creating inventory shortages at any stage of the value chain. The resulting out-of-stock events can mean lost business. The Internet promises to increase business efficiency by reducing reporting delays and increasing reporting accuracy. Speed is clearly the business imperative for the value chain.

Unfortunately, speed can be costly. Today, approximately 60,000 businesses exchange business documents such as orders and invoices with their trading partners through a standard communication and content protocol called Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Most EDI implementations use leased lines or value added networks (VANs) that require significant integration for each trading partner. Network design, installation, and administration can be costly in terms of hardware, software, and staff. In fact, these costs are the key reason that EDI is most widely deployed only in larger companies.

Moving forward, all companies will be able to take advantage of value chain integration through the low cost of the Internet. Open standards for electronic document exchange will allow all companies to become Internet trading partners and function as suppliers, consumers, or both in this business-to-business electronic commerce. This integrated trading will tighten relationships between businesses while offering them greater choices in supplier selection.

Issues in Implementing Electronic Commerce

Although it is simple to describe their benefits, it is not nearly as easy to develop and deploy commerce systems. Companies can face significant implementation issues:

• Cost

• Value

• Security

• Leveraging existing systems

• Interoperability