How ready are you for technology’s impact on your business?
Digital technologies – and the means we employ in our individual lives, jobs, and communities – have altered business moods and will keep on doing so. This has always been so, but the speed at which it transpires is hurling and quicker than the stride of change in institutions and organizations.
When the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted havoc in 2020, both large and small businesses have nothing to choose but to transform. The virus has quelled any surviving concerns about the urgency of digital transformation and eventually made the corporate world a bit powerless. While some companies were forced to shut down and take a break, others have reacted with visionary turns that lift them into contemporary markets by embracing e-commerce and e-services.
What are e-commerce and e-services?
As governments worldwide move to formulate expanded online actions for their citizens, corporations are yet gaping to e-commerce and e-services to conduct assignments such as refining online deals, cross-selling merchandise, and mechanizing customer service inquiries. These systems allow people to do labor without the restriction of distance as well as time.
Electronic commerce, in its simplest definition, is any aspect of a business agreement performed online. Famous online stores like Amazon, eBay, Suoq, and Lazada are e-commerce representations. E-services, on the other side, are the word for online services and are composed of three main aspects, namely: service provider, service receiver, and channel.
What are their pros and cons?
The greatest attribute of the Internet is the nonexistence of brokers or negotiators; you can trade your products relatively easier to customers via the Internet. However, e-commerce today no longer becomes a technological issue but a business issue instead.
On a positive note, e-commerce is:
1. Cost-effective. E-commerce and e-services can lessen labor and other expenses in multiple areas: traditional mail and document preparation, telephone calls, data entry, and overtime and maintenance expenses. They also emancipate staff to concentrate on tasks that yield income.
2. Extended hours. Apart from the conventional marketing of products and services, e-commerce provides service 24/7, permitting customers to shop in the comfort of their homes.
3. Faster and transparent. With businesses held online, clients get pricing, feature, and integration comparisons quickly. It also gives them the skill to checkout instantly within the net their preferred items or services at that second.
4. Less pollution. Buyers coming from different locations can use the Internet without the need to travel. This means e-commerce and e-services curtail road traffic and thereby air pollution.
Meanwhile, the online world, like anything else, also has its limitations. As companies across the spectrum take up online mechanisms and technologies, their exposure to cyber safety comes with it. Here are some of the challenges for e-commerce and services that should be taken into account:
1. Order fulfillment. Having an efficient e-commerce order fulfillment technique is vital in finishing a competitive expectation; however, improperly filled orders, miscommunication, and inventory management are some of its impediments.
2. Security and trust. Protecting your business’s online finances and customer data and deterring from highly possible fraud and online scams are critical to contemplate, significantly that social media is growing faster than ever and has become a crowded startup ecosystem.
3. Legal issues. Every e-commerce or e-service outfit must settle ahead of the game when talking of legal duties. Hence, knowing all applicable laws to your business by consulting a lawyer is the best way to solve this concern.
Already, the crisis has remade the digital landscape. More people have become inclined to connect online and test with modern services. Several CEOs are rushing to answer back to pressing queries about how to retain their workers, assure stock safety, weaken the monetary consequence, handle reputational stakes, and walk with the market suspense – all underselling needs.
As the coronavirus keeps on disrupting enterprises and careers globally, it has also aggressively shoved unusual antidotes towards the post-pandemic market. This, as e-commerce and e-services continue to play the central role in the digital economy.
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