What is Electronic Commerce?
Simply
put, it is doing business (buying & selling of all products/services)
on the Internet.
From ordering food on the Internet to buying software, to books
cars to everything you can think of is possible with e-commerce.
This allows selling to an end - user and facilitates business-to-business
dealings between companies. The World Wide Web or the Internet
is the backbone of the system. It is a network of computers
that allows information to flow from one end to another, irrespective
of geographic boundaries. With all its advantages, Electronic
Commerce is the current trend of doing business and is gaining
immense acceptability across the world. Put simply, if you're
not accepting credit cards in your business, you are losing
customers
All over the world, corporate are successfully using this new
way of doing business. Even in India companies ranging from
VSNL, Mantra Online, Rediff, many more are now using this to
mark their presence in the global supermarket. For example,
a company like Dell Computers sells 3 million dollars worth
of products every single day and Disney Online has equaled a
sales volume of five of its largest retail stores. According
to Forrester Research Inc., EC will reach about 2.3 trillion
dollars by 2003 and this trend will obviously reflect in countries
like India whose electronic business is estimated to be at Rs.
5000 billion by 2005 (IMRB).
Shouldn't you be there too? We become a medium for you.
Benefits of E-Commerce / online payments?
All companies want to expand their businesses. The conventional
method of doing so is by opening sales outlets / branch offices
or establishing a dealer network. By opening these outlets the
company can aim to cater a group of people in that specific
location. But the problem is that in spite of the cost these
outlets can only cater to the market within a maximum of 15-20
Kms radius. Now, considering the size of our country, you can
imagine the volume of the unutilized market potential.
Whereas apart from opening these outlets, if the company was
to have a commercial presence (not a brochure or a static information
site) on the internet they would be able to cater to anyone
who has a internet connection irrespective of his / her physical
location. This virtually means that for a fraction of a cost
as compared to the physical outlet a much larger portion of
this market potential can be tapped.
Apart from this, the companies that are already catering to
their customers through mail orders or booking orders through
the Internet have a major setback in the form of bogus or fake
orders, as there is a certain amount cost / time involved in
processing these orders. This could be avoided if they could
collect some payment from the customer, this means they require
payment collection center on the customers' location, which
unfortunately is not possible.
Credit cards encourage impulse purchasing & we finally have
an e-commerce payment gateway functional in India that enables
you to have an online storefront / payment collection center
on the Internet, this virtually means having a presence on every
Internet user's screen. This would also be your entrance into
the global supermarket of the future at virtually no cost, which
is not limited by any of the geographical limitations that a
physical outlet would have in terms of its spread and reach.
Also this global supermarket is open for 24 hours and 365 days
a year. |
