The development environment is getting better and better, and the prospects for benefits are expected. What are the reasons not to do it?
By the end of 1999, the number of Internet users in China had exceeded 8.9 million and was growing at an astonishing rate of doubling about each year; there were more than 15,000 Chinese sites; there were 2,300 registered government websites at all levels; there were about 300 ISPs, about 1,000 ICPs; there were 3.5 million Internet computers; of course, at present, all these numbers have been quickly refreshed and grown at a rate beyond people's expectations. The Internet's international export bandwidth is 351M, and it is expected to reach 1G to 2G by the end of 2000.
It is undeniable that there are still many constraints in the electronic payment system, but according to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 100 million credit and debit cards in various forms circulating among Chinese residents. Banks such as Bank of China and China Merchants Bank are also actively launching new online payment services, and the pace of electronic financials is accelerating. At the same time, the CA certification system is also under construction, and some relevant enterprises and departments have received "online payment ID cards".
For small and medium-sized enterprises, e-commerce has brought many new opportunities and challenges. Using the Internet to win new markets, create new marketing methods, and participate in competition with large enterprises is increasingly becoming a new strategic development goal for small and medium-sized enterprises.
As we all know, conducting e-commerce will enhance the market competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises, expand their business areas, and achieve global development; at the same time, the market supply chain including manufacturers, suppliers, buyers, and direct users will be further optimized, and the connection between companies in the supply chain will be closer; online transactions will accelerate the speed of user feedback, thereby increasing user loyalty; with the development and application of information technology and system integration technology, internal communication and collaboration will be greatly improved, and the promotion and use of automated manufacturing technology will provide greater opportunities for integrating external data and internal operations; the Internet can provide customers with uninterrupted and personalized services all day long, thereby improving service quality; information, as a commercial asset, itself is an important sellable commodity, and internal data of the company will play an important role in decision-making, and online enterprises will have more and better opportunities to widely access useful commercial and technical information.
·step
Clarify the needs of enterprises, follow basic principles, and start to try out the opportunity.
Of course, some questions need to be answered here to clarify the many "implicit" tasks and unspecified requirements that are included when selling products online:
·Who are your target customers? Do you understand what they need?
·What services can you provide to your customers through the Internet?
·What if you entrust a third party to develop e-commerce applications but need customization?
·Can visits cause the system to be unavailable?
·Is it possible to integrate with your internal management and business partners' systems?
When an enterprise expands its online business, it is necessary to consider coordinating the different needs of its distributors, new customers, wandering customers and loyal customers; consider coordinating the relationship between its distributors, suppliers, and buyers. For manufacturing companies, the role of middlemen cannot be underestimated. At this stage, they are the group that can best understand the needs of end users and provide corresponding services. Therefore, before companies move into e-commerce, they need to follow the basic principles of considering customers, understand the needs of each customer, maintain their brand loyalty, and allow customers to get their personalized needs in the shortest time. If this is not handled well, it is undoubtedly a dead end to surfing the Internet.
If the company has identified the above series of problems and found a solution, then you can try to follow the following steps to conduct a trial run of e-commerce.
Step 1: Establish a corporate website
The process of establishing a corporate website is very similar to the process of applying for a company in reality: first you should register the enterprise domain name; then choose the location of the website (by choosing a network platform service provider) and method (such as using virtual hosting or hosting); the next step is to create a business homepage, and provide corresponding functions on the website (such as adding user feedback forms, emails, etc. on the Internet), and promote the company and its products and services on the website. After going through the above steps, a most basic corporate website was initially established.
Step 2: Carry out business applications and organize marketing
If the company's goal is to use its own website to conduct business activities and implement e-commerce, then an application system that can carry out business activities is also needed on the website. For example, a website that sells goods requires establishing special product search, procurement, payment, order processing, and customer service systems to copy physical manufacturing processes. In addition, it is also necessary to promote the website market to improve customers' awareness of the website brand. For example, log in to the search engine, publish the company's product information and recruitment information, etc.
Step 3: Improve business operations steps and accelerate enterprise information construction
It doesn’t mean that a company has a website and can sell goods online, it is considered to be an e-commerce company. E-commerce is the electronicization of the entire trade activity, and it is the process of applying electronic tools to the enterprise's production, sales, customer service and the entire application chain. According to incomplete statistics, my country currently owns 15 million computers. After removing the computers that cannot be connected to the Internet before 1995, it is about 10 million. If it averages less than 1 in each enterprise, and there are even fewer other network devices such as servers and switches. The level of informatization of Chinese enterprises is generally low and the application level is not high, which will seriously restrict the development of corporate e-commerce applications in the future.
Let's take a look at the rapid response capabilities HP has shown in completing a US$20 million order in China Construction Bank.
Judging from the prices of similar machinery and equipment in the market at that time, HP did not have an advantage. But it negotiated supply issues directly with its U.S. headquarters and its product line supervisors through its own dedicated enterprise network, and other engineers urgently summoned internally studied the combination of non-standard configuration equipment, which HP quickly and successfully provided the entire contract list with the equipment section. How could such a fast service not be satisfactory! Secondly, HP attaches great importance to financial customers. When security issues were on the agenda, HP immediately summoned HP cybersecurity experts working in the United States to Beijing and those who were on vacation also received a task from the email to start their work. From the project was established in April to the completion of installation by the end of June, more than 3,000 points, tens of thousands of engineers traveled all over China within one month.
From this we can see that while Chinese companies conduct e-commerce, it is imperative to improve business operation steps and accelerate the informatization construction of enterprises. This is the most basic need and also the guarantee for the smooth and healthy development of e-commerce.
·think
Selection of the startup stage, evaluation of returns of interests, and display of advantages of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Small and medium-sized enterprises have weak human, financial and information technology strengths, so some issues should be paid special attention to in the process of implementing e-commerce.
The e-commerce process can be started from anywhere in the enterprise system, using the company's original business or technology, or from the beginning of system-level e-commerce planning and design. Some companies may think of leveraging e-commerce when addressing how to handle inventory of multiple quality products; while another company may first choose to improve customer service by implementing an e-commerce strategy. This is a flexible advantage for small and medium-sized enterprises, while large enterprises are different. If you want to conduct e-commerce, you must conduct system-level comprehensive rules.
The returns on the benefits that e-commerce may bring to the enterprise must be evaluated in terms of both commercial consequences and technical feasibility. These two aspects will affect the company's attitude and determination to implement e-commerce. A company that is confident in its market competitiveness may not be able to apply its e-commerce technology well. Its decision-making focus should be on the risk issue of investing in e-commerce; while another company that wants to expand its competitive advantage by using new e-commerce means may have a bigger step in implementing e-commerce.
By the end of 1999, the number of Internet users in China had exceeded 8.9 million and was growing at an astonishing rate of doubling about each year; there were more than 15,000 Chinese sites; there were 2,300 registered government websites at all levels; there were about 300 ISPs, about 1,000 ICPs; there were 3.5 million Internet computers; of course, at present, all these numbers have been quickly refreshed and grown at a rate beyond people's expectations. The Internet's international export bandwidth is 351M, and it is expected to reach 1G to 2G by the end of 2000.
It is undeniable that there are still many constraints in the electronic payment system, but according to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 100 million credit and debit cards in various forms circulating among Chinese residents. Banks such as Bank of China and China Merchants Bank are also actively launching new online payment services, and the pace of electronic financials is accelerating. At the same time, the CA certification system is also under construction, and some relevant enterprises and departments have received "online payment ID cards".
For small and medium-sized enterprises, e-commerce has brought many new opportunities and challenges. Using the Internet to win new markets, create new marketing methods, and participate in competition with large enterprises is increasingly becoming a new strategic development goal for small and medium-sized enterprises.
As we all know, conducting e-commerce will enhance the market competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises, expand their business areas, and achieve global development; at the same time, the market supply chain including manufacturers, suppliers, buyers, and direct users will be further optimized, and the connection between companies in the supply chain will be closer; online transactions will accelerate the speed of user feedback, thereby increasing user loyalty; with the development and application of information technology and system integration technology, internal communication and collaboration will be greatly improved, and the promotion and use of automated manufacturing technology will provide greater opportunities for integrating external data and internal operations; the Internet can provide customers with uninterrupted and personalized services all day long, thereby improving service quality; information, as a commercial asset, itself is an important sellable commodity, and internal data of the company will play an important role in decision-making, and online enterprises will have more and better opportunities to widely access useful commercial and technical information.
·step
Clarify the needs of enterprises, follow basic principles, and start to try out the opportunity.
Of course, some questions need to be answered here to clarify the many "implicit" tasks and unspecified requirements that are included when selling products online:
·Who are your target customers? Do you understand what they need?
·What services can you provide to your customers through the Internet?
·What if you entrust a third party to develop e-commerce applications but need customization?
·Can visits cause the system to be unavailable?
·Is it possible to integrate with your internal management and business partners' systems?
When an enterprise expands its online business, it is necessary to consider coordinating the different needs of its distributors, new customers, wandering customers and loyal customers; consider coordinating the relationship between its distributors, suppliers, and buyers. For manufacturing companies, the role of middlemen cannot be underestimated. At this stage, they are the group that can best understand the needs of end users and provide corresponding services. Therefore, before companies move into e-commerce, they need to follow the basic principles of considering customers, understand the needs of each customer, maintain their brand loyalty, and allow customers to get their personalized needs in the shortest time. If this is not handled well, it is undoubtedly a dead end to surfing the Internet.
If the company has identified the above series of problems and found a solution, then you can try to follow the following steps to conduct a trial run of e-commerce.
Step 1: Establish a corporate website
The process of establishing a corporate website is very similar to the process of applying for a company in reality: first you should register the enterprise domain name; then choose the location of the website (by choosing a network platform service provider) and method (such as using virtual hosting or hosting); the next step is to create a business homepage, and provide corresponding functions on the website (such as adding user feedback forms, emails, etc. on the Internet), and promote the company and its products and services on the website. After going through the above steps, a most basic corporate website was initially established.
Step 2: Carry out business applications and organize marketing
If the company's goal is to use its own website to conduct business activities and implement e-commerce, then an application system that can carry out business activities is also needed on the website. For example, a website that sells goods requires establishing special product search, procurement, payment, order processing, and customer service systems to copy physical manufacturing processes. In addition, it is also necessary to promote the website market to improve customers' awareness of the website brand. For example, log in to the search engine, publish the company's product information and recruitment information, etc.
Step 3: Improve business operations steps and accelerate enterprise information construction
It doesn’t mean that a company has a website and can sell goods online, it is considered to be an e-commerce company. E-commerce is the electronicization of the entire trade activity, and it is the process of applying electronic tools to the enterprise's production, sales, customer service and the entire application chain. According to incomplete statistics, my country currently owns 15 million computers. After removing the computers that cannot be connected to the Internet before 1995, it is about 10 million. If it averages less than 1 in each enterprise, and there are even fewer other network devices such as servers and switches. The level of informatization of Chinese enterprises is generally low and the application level is not high, which will seriously restrict the development of corporate e-commerce applications in the future.
Let's take a look at the rapid response capabilities HP has shown in completing a US$20 million order in China Construction Bank.
Judging from the prices of similar machinery and equipment in the market at that time, HP did not have an advantage. But it negotiated supply issues directly with its U.S. headquarters and its product line supervisors through its own dedicated enterprise network, and other engineers urgently summoned internally studied the combination of non-standard configuration equipment, which HP quickly and successfully provided the entire contract list with the equipment section. How could such a fast service not be satisfactory! Secondly, HP attaches great importance to financial customers. When security issues were on the agenda, HP immediately summoned HP cybersecurity experts working in the United States to Beijing and those who were on vacation also received a task from the email to start their work. From the project was established in April to the completion of installation by the end of June, more than 3,000 points, tens of thousands of engineers traveled all over China within one month.
From this we can see that while Chinese companies conduct e-commerce, it is imperative to improve business operation steps and accelerate the informatization construction of enterprises. This is the most basic need and also the guarantee for the smooth and healthy development of e-commerce.
·think
Selection of the startup stage, evaluation of returns of interests, and display of advantages of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Small and medium-sized enterprises have weak human, financial and information technology strengths, so some issues should be paid special attention to in the process of implementing e-commerce.
The e-commerce process can be started from anywhere in the enterprise system, using the company's original business or technology, or from the beginning of system-level e-commerce planning and design. Some companies may think of leveraging e-commerce when addressing how to handle inventory of multiple quality products; while another company may first choose to improve customer service by implementing an e-commerce strategy. This is a flexible advantage for small and medium-sized enterprises, while large enterprises are different. If you want to conduct e-commerce, you must conduct system-level comprehensive rules.
The returns on the benefits that e-commerce may bring to the enterprise must be evaluated in terms of both commercial consequences and technical feasibility. These two aspects will affect the company's attitude and determination to implement e-commerce. A company that is confident in its market competitiveness may not be able to apply its e-commerce technology well. Its decision-making focus should be on the risk issue of investing in e-commerce; while another company that wants to expand its competitive advantage by using new e-commerce means may have a bigger step in implementing e-commerce.