Out of the stone age

I am often asked when I will stop being a dinosaur and 'cross the chasm' by implementing e-commerce as part of my business. Well, I would propose that I dropped my T-Rex identity way back, because you should define e-commerce as 'the utilisation of technology to carry out your daily tasks, as opposed to a purely financial transaction monitor'.

Why is this so important ?

Look to what we deliver on a daily basis - systems to our customers.

How do we deliver this? Normally by the sale of a product or service, from us or our vendors, and by meeting the requirements of our customers.

To achieve this we have to equip three parties to complete the transaction.

First, the salesman. In this day and age we ask our salesforce to compete and understand products and technologies that change on a daily, often hourly basis.

How many of us really take the time to ensure these ambassadors of our organisations truly understand the products they sell and the positioning of them within the industry as a whole? How many of us can afford to?

Well, thankfully today, with the introduction of Web-based technology, it is far easier and cost-effective for the diligent salespeople to keep abreast of everything they need to know - both at product level and, more importantly, at the prospect/customer level.

So, the perfect salesperson should be able to make that call with all the information required to successfully carry out the first part of a transaction.

Now what about the customer? We used to be able to sell products and services successfully to our customers because we were the magical people who could help them by taking the mystique out of this technospeak.

Well, thanks to the ubiquitous nature of IT, the ability of the MIS and even the business manager to use the Web, we have a customer base that at times threatens to be better informed than we are - particularly if they are in the PC space. But at least the decision-making process can be accelerated through greater awareness and understanding.

Note to Bill Gates: at least in the Unix world we still make money out of services revenue, due to the fact we can pretend there is science in all we do. You see, there are advantages to not being a simple commodity.

And yes, there are customers where the extension of the use of Web-based technologies to embrace them and bring them into the company fold makes more sense and changes the relationship from supplier/customer to that of collaborator.

Examples of this include the extension of Websites to provide private areas with customer-specific pricing - relevant product details and, of course, the early whisperings of full electronic financial transactions, although in the main this still appears to be predominantly just the ordering process rather than the complete transaction.

And finally, to the vendors we buy our products from. Where would we be if they had not made massive investment in developing their own Web-based information services, normally with secured 'partner' specific parts of their own internal Websites - used to provide us with the tools and information which we need to be far more effective in our jobs.

For all parties involved, there is a significant improvement in time to market, with the ability to canvass opinion quickly and cheaply and get even faster responses.

So you see, although many people think the e-commerce market is not with us properly, this is a fallacy. The key to understanding how to use it is to maximise the level of service you give to your customer base and expect from your vendor, and let it help you achieve the dizzy heights of customer satisfaction. And even measure them.

Peter Deane is managing director of Horizon Open Systems.