The conference proceedings, then began with a session titled 'Extending E-business to your business'. This was chaired by Vijay Mukhi, the Internet 'guru', as he is referred to. The start of the session was pretty momentous, with the announcement of the formation of an electronic business association. This association aims to promote and facilitate the proliferation of e-business in India. Vijay Mukhi, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) -- India's international telecom services provider -- and Rediff-on-the-net -- one of India's largest general news sites -- are some of the founding members of this association. (www.eba-india.com.).

Session details

Some figures mentioned at the beginning of the presentation E-commerce: the paradigm by Anjan Mukherji, Deputy Managing Partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers(PWC), put the pace of growth of internet in perspective. While the pager took over 10 years to reach about 10 per cent of the population, the internet has taken only 2years to reach that figure. Among the top four websites in terms of number of 'hits' are amazon.com --  the online booksellers -- and bluemountain.com -- a greeting card site. This gives an indication of the kind of businesses that happen on the internet.

A study done by PWC globally shows that several corporates set up a website (about 38 per cent) for the savings it provides in inventory and marketing costs, brought about by the transacting on the net. 

The same study showed that lack of security will be the prime technical hurdle for e-commerce to reach its full potential. This can only be overcome with newer and better security and encryption methods. That this is an important area is borne out by the fact that there has been a 117 percent growth in firewalling solutions in the last four years.

Among Asian corporates (covered in the survey mentioned above), there is the added issue is of managing in an external environment that is volatile -- partly due to the shift in business paradigm brought about by e-commerce.

59 per cent of the Asian managers felt that the impact of e-commerce would be significant, while 46 per cent of the Indians among them shared the same opinion. 14 per cent of Asian managers felt that e-commerce would completely reshape businesses with an equal proportion of Indian managers feeling the same. Customer service (45 per cent among Asian managers and 64 per cent among Indian managers) was the prime motive for doing e-business.

Besides these, there exists cultural hurdles in different countries that need to be overcome. Other issues that influence the growth of e-commerce are leadership of companies, the agility of the company to respond in the market place and the e-commerce related internet technology.

Barriers to success of e-commerce need to be addressed to achieve the kind of growth that is forecast or possible. In India, they are low internet penetration, telecom infrastructure, structure of businesses, businesses that are not well networked and the regulatory framework.

The stages of e-commerce for any business are:

• Web presence with static information on the site

• Integration with customer/ supplier in the form of interactive content

• Transformation with the formation of online communities and supply chain

• And finally full fledged e-commerce

The process starts with the internal structure, goes on to networking customers and then suppliers. E-commerce helps mass customisation, as it has happened with Dell, the computer manufacturer. Customers of Dell can now order a computer with the configuration of their choice on the company website. While cutting down other costs this has made it possible for Dell to respond to each customer's demand and make the product accordingly. Another gain from e-commerce as seen in the above case is the elimination of intermediaries and the consequent lowering of costs. It also helps a company keep low levels of inventory.

E-commerce can be called the business model with negative inventory and working capital. E-commerce also allows outsourcing and helps an enterprise get more commoditised in its operation, even leading to a virtual enterprise.

The e-commerce horizon would have the content providers, the hardware and software providers and the infrastructure providers. The value addition takes place at the content provider level. The other two groups could slowly merge into one in terms of their operations but the business will be driven on the basis of the content providers and the infrastructure providers.

The second speaker for the session was Sridar Iyengar, Managing director, KPMG India Limited who spoke on Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management is crucial in modern business, more so in the context of e-commerce. The net presents a unique situation where the customer can move from site to site, company to company in the matter of seconds. This offers a customer the kind of selectivity in shopping that is not seen in the ‘real’ shopping world. What the customer would expect in return is comfort level in online shopping experience, the requisite security level and trust from the company.

Understanding the e-customer is very important. The customer on the net behaves differently from what he is in the real shopping world. To understand the online customer needs market research on a continuous basis since the e-market is changing constantly. For this online surveys and data warehouses can help. This can help build a customer behaviour model which will help in building better customer delivery models. Such customer delivery models can help customise offerings based on the profile of the customer derived from the database. It is only these kind of customised delivery and interaction interface that will help retain customers.

On the internet, customers have a different yardstick for satisfaction and companies need to deliver what they promise. Customer loyalty becomes more fickle on the internet and can be as minimal as the few minutes that he/she spends on the website initially. The initial feel, user-friendly interface initially and the consistent customer service go towards retaining the customer.

Worldwide it has been found that books, IT products and travel/ leisure products and services have been the most sought after and accessed services on the web.

Ultimately, for maintaining customer relationship it is not the technical infrastructure but the content and the customer interaction that plays the crucial role.