Providing one or more services online

Although companies may choose to go straight to Stage 2, the vast majority of companies will have been at Stage 1 for some time first. This will have established the Internet as a vital part of their business infrastructure and they will have used it to market their business. However, 58% of SMEs surveyed create web pages in the first place because they believe their products / services are suitable for sale over the Internet (Golden and Griffen, 1999). By proceeding to Stage 2, they are showing that they are ready to start providing one or more of their services online. In addition, they may also choose to start providing some form of Customer Service or Support online. Finally, they may also be ready to commence some form of online collaboration with their business partners and suppliers.

A lot of SMEs do not believe that E-Commerce is applicable to them and they don't appear to regard selling online as important (Golden and Griffen, 1999). However, Kieran McGowan, the former CEO of the IDA believes that 'electronic commerce (is) nothing less than a revolution' (Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business, 1999, http://www.gov.ie/committees-99/c-enterprise/rep-ecommerce/default.htm). The worldwide B2B Internet commerce market is on pace to total $8.5 trillion in 2005 (Gartner Group) and since the majority of businesses in the world are in the SME sector e.g. 98% for Ireland (Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business, 1999), it is vitally important that SMEs do not underestimate the importance of E-Business.

There follows an overview of the constituent parts of Phase 2:

• Online Sales
• Customer Relationship Management
• Collaboration
• Subscription Services

Online Sales

In order to be able to sell online, the Business must ensure that they purchase or develop some form of E-Business solution. This solution will form part of the overall E-Business offering. There are off the shelf solutions available from ISPs but they have limited customisability. A rule of thumb is that the more customisation you want, the more expensive the solution is likely to be. A number of factors need to be taken into account when preparing to sell online. These include:

• Establishing customer trust - a privacy policy and terms and conditions of use of the website should be drafted (See Legal Issues Section).
• Providing a browsable and searchable catalogue of services (See Sales & Marketing Section).
• Providing a means to pay for the service electronically (See Sales & Marketing Section).
• Delivering the service online - logistics (See Sales & Marketing Section).
• Tax Issues (See Sales & Marketing Section).
• Legal Issues (See Sales & Marketing Section).

Customer Relationship Management

CRM on the web can take many forms. These include:

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on the website - common answers to common questions.
• Technical support wizards - work through a problem, step by step
• Bulletin boards - allow customers to post enquiries and support questions
• Chat rooms - real time chat with one of your support staff
  
• Video Conferencing - face to face support via the Internet
  
• Peer Communities - let your customers answer each other's questions.

It is important to ensure that any forum provided to customers is moderated to ensure that correct answers are being given and that illegal comments are not being made (see Chapter 7).

There are CRM software solutions available but these are often aimed at the large enterprise and are generally out of reach financially and technically for the SME. A new type of company called an Application Service Provider (ASP) has emerged. They have seen that there is an opportunity to enter a market that is poised to take off. Gartner predicts that worldwide CRM spending will reach $76.3 Billion by 2005. ASPs have the technical expertise to implement and support CRM and SMEs can outsource it to them.

The ASP can offer reduced costs of entry, ease of integration and savings on IT labour by virtue of economies of scale. A possible downside to using ASPs is lack of total control of the CRM solution.

Collaboration

Collaborating with business partners via the web is also a possibility. For example, where services being offered for sale have a complimentary service available on a partners website, the site may be configured to allow this information to be brought to the notice of the user. Invoicing and accounts systems can be integrated with those of suppliers.
Collaboration may also take the form of integration with a portal site or an extranet e.g. the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland I-Commerce Portal. Collaboration allows for the exchange of business information to the mutual benefit of both companies.

Subscription Services

Another form of delivering the service online is the whole area of subscription services. Rather than delivering the service to the customer, the service is delivered by allowing access to restricted content. An example of this is the recent move by The Irish Times to move their Ireland.com site to a subscription model. This may end up being a better business model than allowing advertising on your site and has become increasingly prevalent recently e.g. Ireland.com, FT.com

© Trinity Solutions 2002 ~ 2012