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E Commerce is one of the most important facets of the Internet to have emerged in the recent times. E-Commerce or electronic commerce involves carrying out business over the Internet with the assistance of computers, which are linked to each other forming a network. To be specific E-Commerce would be buying and selling of goods and services and transfer of funds through digital communications.

The benefits of E-Commerce:

In general:

· Increases the speed and accuracy with which businesses can exchange information.

· Electronic payments (tax refunds, paychecks, etc.) cost less to issue and are more secure.

· Can make products and services available in remote areas.

· Enables people to work from home, providing scheduling flexibility.

· E-Commerce allows people to carry out businesses without the barriers of time or distance. One can log on to the Internet at any point of time, be it day or night and purchase or sell anything one desires at a single click of the mouse.

· The direct cost-of-sale for an order taken from a web site is lower than through traditional means (retail, paper based), as there is no human interaction during the on-line electronic purchase order process. Also, electronic selling virtually eliminates processing errors, as well as being faster and more convenient for the visitor.

· E-Commerce is ideal for niche products. Customers for such products are usually few. But in the vast market place i.e. the Internet, even niche products could generate viable volumes.

· Another important benefit of E-Commerce is that it is the cheapest means of doing business.

· The day-to-day pressures of the marketplace have played their part in reducing the opportunities for companies to invest in improving their competitive position. A mature market, increased competitions have all reduced the amount of money available to invest. If the selling price cannot be increased and the manufactured cost cannot be decreased then the difference can be in the way the business is carried out. E-Commerce has provided the solution by decimating the costs, which are incurred.

· Operational benefits of e commerce include reducing both the time and personnel required to complete business processes, and reducing strain on other resources. It’s because of all these advantages that one can harness the power of E-Commerce and convert a business to E-Business by using powerful turnkey E-Commerce solutions made available by E-Business solution providers.

Exchange and Share Data Across the World

Text messages, documents, graphics, photographs, music, video, CAD/CAM files, and much more, can be converted into data and sent as E-Mail attachments or presented on a web site. There are no postage, printing and packaging costs with E-Commerce communications. So, use this new communications' method to work quicker, and in new ways, with customers and suppliers outside of your locality or country.

Send Messages Faster and Cheaper
When you send a message, you only pay for the Internet access. As soon as the message has arrived at your ISP, it will be sent for zero cost to all the people to whom it has been addressed. Moreover, your message is likely to arrive at its destination, even the other side of the world, in a matter of seconds or minutes, depending on the size of the E-Mail and its attachments. Think of the possibilities for saving time and money with E-Mail.

Approve and Proof Work Quickly

A quotation, purchase order, letter, design drawings, brochure, or advert colour proof, etc., can be E-Mailed to you as an attachment for your approval. Using eMail in this way can dramatically speed-up the turn-around of work between you and your business contacts.

Introduce Collaborative Working

With fast, reliable, and cheap E-Commerce communications, it is possible for colleagues, customers, suppliers and partners, to use collaborative working practices to manage, share, and enhance project work, regardless of location.

Update Employees Instantly With New Policies or Procedures
E-Mail works well when communicating with colleagues who are off-site, out of the country, or teleworking.

Hold Web Meetings (Data Conferencing)
A great way to have a virtual meeting is to upload a document (spreadsheets, project plans, etc) on to a web site and enable it to be viewed and edited in real-time through the Internet. Holding virtual meetings can save significantly on travel expenses and time.

Take Advantage of Time Differences
As E-Commerce communications are so fast and low cost, new business relationship have been established where work is exchanged between time zones at the end of one day, which, on the other side of the world, is the beginning of either the same or next day.

Send Out E-Mail Automatically

Event-triggered E-Mails can be used to acknowledge orders made on web sites, and to update customers on order progress. Alert-E-Mails or SMS messages can also be used to notify technical support of critical issues or maintenance problems. These, and many other similar applications, are effortless, cheap, and efficient ways of enhancing customer service and the brand experience.

Use the Internet to Improve Business Administration
With a mobile 'phone connected to a portable computer, employees working off-site can access and up-date internal information, such as customer records, price lists, time sheets, schedules, and job reports. Providing remote Internet access for staff makes it possible for the latest information to be at hand, for administrative tasks such as invoicing, employee whereabouts, and expense claims.

Train on the Web
The multi-media capabilities of web sites make them ideal for creating a virtual learning environment for employees and customers. When training material is updated, the latest version is immediately available. On-line learning facilities enable trainees living all over the world to access courseware when it is convenient to them, and without having to travel to a training centre, which, in turn, saves time and expenses.

Replace the Fax Machine and Save Money
If a multi-page document has to be faxed to many people, it can work out expensive on telephone bills, especially if a national or international call has to be made. The cost savings can be huge if E-Mail is used instead, and the message can also be sent to multiple people for no extra cost

Research & Development

Speed Up Market and Product Research

Information on almost every conceivable subject is available on the WWW and most of it is free. Finding information to assist in product development is usually much quicker using E-Commerce methods, and this can result in significantly reduced product development times.

Trade Intellectual Assets On the Web

Patents and other intellectual assets can be bought, sold, and licensed, on E-Marketplaces, making the whole process of acquiring licensing rights, and marketing them, easier.

Use the Internet To Collaborate On Research & Development Computational resources, knowledge, ideas, and data, can be freely exchanged and shared through the Internet. This enables geographically dispersed research centres to work seamlessly together.

For the seller:

Marketing
Look Bigger
A well designed and presented web site can project an image that you are a much larger business than what you really are. This can help when trying to win business from larger organisations and to establish credibility with new customers.

Use the Internet to Deliver Products and Services
The Internet is not just a communication channel; it is also a zero-cost delivery channel. Many products and services, which are traditionally delivered as a physical object or as a physical service, can now be delivered virtually in the form of data. Books, music, video, training, software, catalogues, advice, information, entertainment, customer support, and much more, can be transformed into data and delivered immediately through the Internet to anywhere in the world. As a result, the traditional barriers of global trading - such as time, distance and cost - have either been removed or minimised by E-Commerce.

Provide An Extensive Business Profile and On-line Information Centre
Uploading information to your web site on products, services, support, prices, contact details, and news, makes it easy for prospects, customers, shareholders, job seekers, journalists, and employees, to find what they want at any time.

Track Response On the Internet

Campaign-specific E-Mail and web site address can be used to track the response to special promotional offers made on-line or offline. This information can be very useful to quickly obtain feedback on the effectiveness of marketing activities, so that mid-campaign changes can be made to optimise effectiveness.

Send eNewsletters To Customers And Save Time, Postage And Packaging

Update your customers and suppliers immediately with news and offers by E-Mail. Also, reinforce brand awareness and nurture customer loyalty.

Clearly Position Your Business

By using keywords and other search engine ranking techniques, it is possible to attract visitors who are actively seeking, and specifically interested in, your business offerings. The Internet can be a more accurately-targeted and cost-effective marketing medium than traditional means.

Sales
Introduce Another Channel To Market Your business web site can take orders 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and is readily accessible to customers all over the world. A successful business web site can produce a highly profitable revenue stream.

Automate Interactive Business Processes The interactive nature of a web site is ideal for capturing and simulating a process, and making it globally accessible through the Internet. Once you've done it, visitors from all other the world can then easily walk through your automated marketing, selling, buying, and paying process, with a few clicks of a mouse. This idea can also be applied to customer service and support processes, where the visitors help themselves to the information required.

Lower the Cost of Order Processing The direct cost-of-sale for an order taken from a web site should be lower than through traditional means (retail, paper based), as there is no human interaction during the on-line electronic purchase order process. Also, electronic selling should virtually eliminate processing errors, as well as being faster and more convenient for the visitor.

No Physical Space Limitations
You can offer more products with an E-Catalogue, than you can physically stock on shelves.

Buy and Sell Quicker

Requirements, brochures, quotations, purchase orders, delivery schedules, etc., can be E-Mailed within seconds to your suppliers and customers all over the world. The whole process of buying and selling can be made much more efficient and responsive using E-Mails.

Boost Sales With Exports

Use your web site and E-Mail as a low cost way of extending the geographical reach of your business marketing activities, and to develop a global export market for your products and services.

Close Sales Faster Respond to prospect and customer enquiries in minutes rather than days, presenting an image of professionalism and efficiency.

Use a web site for Direct and Indirect Selling A web site can be used as a direct marketing channel that cuts out the "middleman" and enables direct sales interaction with customers and consumers. Alternatively, a web site can provide information on products and services, and brand-building corporate information, that points the visitor to a local sales channel outlet, such as a retailer or supplier, by giving contact information. This type of web site removes all channel conflict as it is seen to be supporting the channel and generating leads for it.

Procurement
Cut Procurement Costs and Improve Efficiency
E-Procurement systems can achieve the following business benefits:
A 73% reduction in transaction costs,
A 70% to 80% reduction in purchase order processing cycles,
A 5% to 10% reduction in prices paid.
Maverick buying is stopped and internal buyers benefit from being able to place orders with many suppliers, using a single common interface such as a browser, as well as integrating with other order purchasing and financial functions within the enterprise.

Supply Chain
Improve Supply Chain Efficiency
Internet and E-Commerce methods enable real-time communications, and dynamic interchange of data, up and down the supply chain. Information can be shared through E-Mails, Extranets, or by using middleware such as Microsoft Biz Talk, to enable legacy systems to transform an EDI document into an XML-readable format, so that every E-Commerce system can understand and interact with it, and vice versa. By having better visibility across the supply chain, inventory levels can be reduced, as supplies are more predictable. With lower inventory levels, costs can be driven out of the supply chain.

What AdLogistics
Optimise Inventory Levels
By combining the flow of goods with the flow of information, it is possible to improve almost any process performed by a company, both internal and external. With this information, inventory levels can be optimised, to reflect actual demand levels and, correspondingly, customers should be able to see on-line what current quantities and availabilities are.

Provide Information by Self-Service
Integrated supply chains, with free-flow of information through the Internet between customers, suppliers, and partners, enables a participant in the chain to provide a self-service capability to others, and automatic updating of Warehouse Management Systems (WMS).

· Consider the following possibilities when using the Web to share information: Enable suppliers to give their customers pre-delivery advice. The Web can be used to tell customers what pallets are coming on which truck, what goods they hold, even what expiry dates the goods possess. This data can be used to allocate warehouse locations or arrange cross- docking if necessary.

· Empower customers to do their own order chasing and tracking through the warehouse from a web site.

· Let suppliers see the inventory they supply, and move towards vendor management inventory and consignment stocking, using E-Commerce methods.

· Bring customers and suppliers closer to the inventory for obtaining real-time order status. This also allows users to view suppliers' warehouses to obtain parts availability, or to see manufactures or third-party-logistics (3PL's) company warehouses, to check inventory.

· View and manage multi-sites. Using WMS, intelligent-user interfaces can be created to visualise a user's warehouse locally, nationally, and globally. Having a complete picture of stock and its location, can make it easier and quicker to figure out the quickest way to replenish stock to the customer, by identifying which is the nearest or best fulfilment site for any order.

· Share resources. As E-Commerce enables information flow between collaborating businesses, it makes it easier and simpler for internal and non-competing organisations to share procurement, and physical and logistical activities such as warehousing and distribution. Cost savings and efficiencies from sharing and economies of scale should result.

The strategic benefit of making a business ‘E-Commerce enabled’, is that it helps reduce the delivery time, labour cost and the cost incurred in the following areas:

1. Document preparation

2. Error detection and correction

3. Reconciliation

4. Mail preparation

5. Telephone calling

6. Data entry

7. Overtime

8. Supervision expenses

Advantages Do Customers Get From E-Commerce?

Research has shown that customers and consumers shop on-line because of these five reasons (ranked in order of importance):

Convenience and Ease of Use. Consumers can literally shop in their underwear at 3 am, from any location, using an Internet connection.

Variety and Larger Selections. Consumers can compare and contrast more products more quickly. Provides a wider range of choices

Cost Savings. Some customers cite bargains even after paying additional shipping charges.

Anonymity. Customers can buy questionable or embarrassing products while concealing their true identity.

No Sales Pressure. Customers who dislike salesmen can avoid the experience altogether. Internet shopping makes it easy to go offline to think about a purchase.

Research has also found that customers and consumers look for these three things when shopping on line:

Detailed information about the product itself - Provides an easy way to customize the level of detail in the information obtained

Price comparisons - Makes it easier to obtain competitive bids

Detailed information about the vendor

From the buyer’s perspective also E-Commerce offers a lot of tangible advantages.

1. Reduction in buyer’s sorting out time.

2. Better buyer decisions

3. Less time is spent in resolving invoice and order discrepancies.

4. Increased opportunities for buying alternative products.

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Advantages of E-Commerce

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