Ship Agency : Tuesday 3rd October

15.30 - 17.30 Lars Heisselberg - Gulf Agency Company

The Realities of e-Commerce for your business

by Lars Peter Heisselberg Director of E-Commerce Development

Abstract

Don’t go to fortune tellers looking for good news about your business unless you’ve started to implement an e-commerce strategy. The Internet will not bring about world peace or a cleaner environment but it will definitely cause radical changes in the way business is done, whether it is "business to consumer" or "business to business".

Definitions of e-Commerce vary. GAC defines traditional business as creating value for customers, employees, owners and society. e-Business as using digital technologies in business processes and e-Commerce as using digital technologies to generate revenues.

Recent studies by reliable research groups show dramatic increases in spending on e-commerce. Business to Business spending is predicted to be worth more than $7 trillion US in a few years time. Both mature companies and startups are carving out new territories in cyberspace. The shipping industry is also doing this. Witness the growth of shipping portals and the challenges and opportunities they present.

The reasons for the growth we are witnessing can be reduced to the impact of the "three Cs" - comfort, cost and creativity. In brief this means Internet-based services are increasingly easy to use, cost less to access and use, and are generating fresh new ideas for serving customer needs.

To get involved in e-commerce means understanding the market trends towards having fewer agents and suppliers, outsourcing non-core activities, using integrated systems with customers/suppliers/partners, and having more openness and transparency in core business relationships.

To make a successful entry into e-Commerce requires four elements - Money to invest in customer research and systems development, Time to allow your systems to achieve optimal functionality and your customers to get comfortable with using them, a Customer Focus to ensure you are tailoring your systems to meeting the individual needs of your customers, and Support from senior management and Board directors to ensure your investments are not being challenged in mid stream.

You will also need staff dedicated to the task. E-Commerce success cannot be achieved on a part-time basis. It’s not a job for the Marketing Manager or for the IT Systems Manager. It must be awarded to a senior manager who can co-ordinate activities across a number of operational and administrative areas.

With these elements in place, the dual targets of an e-Commerce strategy become clear - higher quality of service, and lower costs. Other lesser targets may be included but these two - quality and cost - are at the core.

It may be safe to visit fortune tellers if you have an e-Commerce strategy in place. GAC is developing and implementing its strategy right now and its callsign to customers out in cyberspace is …. MyGAC.