The New world of E-Commerce

What is E-Commerce?
We are all aware of the dramatic growth of the Internet as well as of the rapid evolution of its technical infrastructure.  The Internet offers a variety of services, of which E-mail and the World Wide Web (www) are the most popular ones.

The Web offers almost infinite options, from viewing the filmo-graphy of your favorite actors to checking stock market quotations. But from an economic point of view, the most important and potentially revolutionary service of the web is ELECTRONIC COMMERCE.

Known popularly as e-commerce, this facility consists in allowing the selling and purchasing of almost anything, from almost any place of the world to any other place of the world, through the internet.

Merchant to Consumer E-commerce:
Any person with access to the web can easily purchase books, CD’s, electronic equipment, and almost anything from suppliers located in any country. We can compare prices and make rational purchase decisions.  It does not matter were we live, and the cost of access to the web is not high.
  
This part of e-commerce, the selling by merchants directly to consumers is certainly very important.  It is growing rapidly, and will cause many changes in the way the traditional manufacturer to consumer chain is structured.
  
Many businesses will simply disappear and others will have to adjust to the new model if they are to survive.  Managing a business engaged in producing and/or selling will be radically different.
 

Firm to Firm E-Commerce:
But the most important part of e-commerce, both in volume and in its potential to produce radical changes, is the firm-to-firm commerce.
  
Business will no longer be restricted to the traditional system of selling and purchasing industrial goods.  By offering their goods on the Internet sellers of raw materials or industrial goods may reach customers all over the world.  And firms will be able to find the best providers of the inputs they need in the same way.
  
You may imagine how this will affect selling and purchasing organizations in every firm.  And, here again, managing a business in the near future will require new types of knowledge and different talents.
 

E-COMMERCE Manager:
To successfully manage a business in the e-commerce era, all of the traditional skills will still be necessary:
Marketing, finance, personnel administration, etc. will still be vital.
  
The additional new skills needed, will be:
A good understanding of how the WWW works.
Flexibility of mind to follow (or better, produce) the quick changes, which are taking place in this environment.  These changes are technological as well as cultural, social and economical.
 

Why an existing traditional firm must sell on the web?
An existing firm will probably have to complement (possibly not replace) its business using e-commerce forced by new and existing competitors.
  
Barnes & Noble are the traditional giant chain of bookstores in the US Amazon.com started as a web retailer of books and soon enough Barnes & Noble was forced to establish a web store, too. The traditional stockbrokers like Merrill Lynch are, reluctantly, trading shares on the web (at much lower service) forced by low cost web brokers as E-Trade.
  
The traditional shopping mall is to going to disappear, but is certainly under siege. Are the owners of the malls worried? At least one of them is.  The Wall Street Journal reported that the owners of The Saint Louis Galleria, a 170-store mall, prohibited that the tenants who operate the stores advertise the sale of their products on the web.
 

Which are the Conclusions?
It is obvious that e-commerce is both a great challenge for existing businesses, and a golden opportunity for start-ups, or for existing firms to grow.
  
The traditional managing skills will still be necessary, but new skills and a different mentality must be also present.
  
If you are, or will become a professional manger, you will have to acquire those new skills and convert to the new mentality.
  
And if you plan to manage your own business, this is the best time in history to reach this goal, via e –commerce, no matter how small your available capital; you may even start a company in your spare time.

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