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The E-Business Reality

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DQC Bureau
New Update

The recent "Gartner Summit on e-Reality" held in Mumbai was an eye-opener in many respects. The summit came out with some very startling statements that we feel have a lot of relevance to channel partners who are in the process of integrating their business with the Internet to achieve greater growth in the e-economy.



Statement No 1:

"There is no inconsistency between enormous growth in B2C and B2B e-commerce and huge 'failure' rate of dotcoms." What this means is that while partners go ahead in doing everything that is required to gear themselves up for e-business, they should not be deterred by the news of very high dotcom failures.

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Chickens have already come home to roost for dotcoms what with real estate agents and landlords in major metros becoming weary of leasing out space to them. A report in Business Standard says that as many as 13 dotcom companies in Bangalore have defaulted on their rental agreements. This was because venture capital funds were not ready to provide the second round of funding.



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This kind of a pitfall may not arise in the case of majority of the channel partners because their efforts are primarily aimed at integrating their business with the Internet. At the same time, the lesson that partners have to learn from dotcoms is that they cannot approach the Internet with expectations of quick success. Success in e-business could take a long time to come going by the second statement from Gartner Summit.







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Statement No 2:

"Organizing e-business is a critical success factor. Eighty-five percent e-businesses in Asia-Pacific will organize itself only by 2003." This statement is no exaggeration at all. Especially with our bandwidth problems, the Indian government, in the first place, has lot of organizing to do. We have examples of channel partners putting their B2B and B2C plans on the backburner because of the crawling speed of the Internet.
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The channel partners on their part also have a lot of organizing to do on their existing sites. A review of some of the B2B sites partners has shown that the sites lack organization. For instance, two sites that sold PCs online had inadequate offerings on support. While one said support would be available only in metros, the other did not have anything to offer at all. A B2B site without support may bring in business in the short term, but may lose goodwill in the long run.



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Logistics is the other aspect that channel partners have to look into to ensure prompt deliveries to orders received online. While the reach of the Internet is its biggest advantage, it could also prove to be a nuisance when it comes to execution of orders. For instance, how would a channel partner from Kolkata handle an order from Cochin, if his logistics were not in place? But the third statement from Gartner Summit makes positive suggestions on logistic handling.







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Statement No 3:

Collaborative commerce is replacing e-commerce. We find this statement extremely significant for channel partners. If partners are looking at e-business as an engine for growth, then they need to accept this statement as the Gospel truth and work assiduously to build up collaborators across the country who will make logistic handling a simple affair.

Sylvester Lobo

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