Comcation Business Center - Doing Business on the Internet

Businesses now have one of the greatest opportunites ever. The Internet industry is evolving faster and is responsible for more fundamental changes in the way business is conducted than any other industry in history. Companies that utilize the power of the Internet can dramatically expand their markets, improve customer service, and reduce costs. By engaging in Internet commerce, companies can operate a virtual global business without the need to maintain physical storefronts and offices around the world.

Undoubtedly the last two years have been among the most exciting and momentous in history. We have seen technologies emerge, be accepted by the marketplace, and begin to fundamentally change the way we all do business and ultimately the way we all live. The Internet today is gaining in popularity at a rate that is utterly unprecedented for any communication technology.

It took radio more than 30 years to reach 60 million users; television 15 years; and cable TV roughly ten years. Already the number of Internet users stands at approximately 60 million, only three years after being introduced to the world at large. No technology in history has captured our imaginations so thoroughly and inspired more dreams. And it is no wonder, because the Web, for the first time in history, has brought us the potential to connect with absolutely everything and everybody. It has quite literally opened up the world.

The Web alone is a marvelous and exciting phenomenon, but the real value emerges when Internet technologies are integrated with the existing information technology (IT) infrastructure. All the value and substance of the IT infrastructure then becomes accessible through the Internet to millions of people the world over, day and night. That is what the world at large, and especially the business community, has discovered, and in the process they have begun transforming themselves and moving toward a new model, an electronic business (e-business) model.

What is an e-business? It is business that relies on the incredible reach and connectivity of the Web to cut costs, to integrate all its employees and trading partners, and to streamline all its business processes. An e-business uses the Web to reach out to new markets and customers, to accelerate its time-to-market, and to foster new, tighter bonds of customer loyalty. In short, an e-business uses the phenomenal reach of the Web, together with the rich substance of the IT infrastructure, to raise productivity to new levels, create new ways to serve customers, and develop new channels for revenue and profit growth.

While larger businesses lead in integrating the Web into their operations, Internet use is growing fastest among small and midsize companies. That is because Web hosting services from companies such as Comcation now give the small and medium size business access to the full advantages of information technology to a far greater degree than ever before. Few companies, if any, have made the complete transformation to e-business. It is, after all, in its infancy. But it is clear that many have started.

Generally speaking customers start simple, implementing very basic applications first, like e-mail or simple static Web sites, to publish information and get their brand before a targeted audience.

Already many business establishments on the Internet use it for e-mail and have established Web sites. But customers are only just beginning to implement the more complex applications. In fact, only a small percentage of Internet users are doing electronic commerce complete with payments, but the percentage is expected to double over the next six months.

Essentially, a business on the Web is doing one of three things:

They are publishing information at their Web site primarily to make their brand visible to millions more people.
They are exploiting the incredible communications capabilities of the Internet.
They are trying to increase revenue and profit by doing electronic commerce.

Of course, they may well be doing a combination of these things.

Web sites, as we all know, range from the truly useful to the ridiculous. But many more are serious publishing ventures, presenting valuable information. Millions of people around the world are getting up-to-date news; dates times and locations of events; the latest results of every athlete, every country and every sport. It can capture and organize rich text and multimedia files including photographs and editorial content, and integrate it all with up-to-the-second results in web pages created especially for the user. Clearly the Web is incomparable when it comes to publishing information.

While technology makes the Web experience richer and richer everyday, with more content in different, more exciting, more compelling forms, the Web is not really about technology, it's about business.

Beyond simple web publishing and communication, the aspect of e-business that has most of the world excited today is electronic commerce. At its simplest, electronic commerce might involve merely putting up a catalog and taking orders.

Among the many incentives businesses have for moving to web-commerce, saving money is way up there. Another reason electronic commerce is picking up momentum is due to the establishment of the Secure Electronic Transaction protocol, or SET, which has pretty much solved the problem of secure payments.

Commerce is becoming far more personal. In the past, business focused on the product, designing it to appeal to a mass market. Now with the colossal amounts of information and processing power available to an e-business, the focus is shifting rapidly to the customer as an individual. For the same reason, instead of ending with an individual transaction, the relationship with the customer can now span an entire lifetime. For the first time, one-to-one marketing is becoming a reality as companies of all kinds use e-business technologies to gain a 24-hour-a-day, lifelong knowledge of individual customers, as individuals. This new found understanding of the customer can lead to incredible opportunities for supporting individual human beings rather than mere units in a mass market. Likewise, for the first time, the customer can have all the resources of a global corporation focused on his or her wants and needs. What an incredible opportunity, not just for an e-business, but for the customer as well, and all because of the availability of information.

It is no wonder that revenue estimates for electronic commerce by the year 2000 exceed $300 billion dollars.

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By subscribing to Comcation's Internet Services you acknowledge that you have read, agree, and abide by the terms and conditions of Comcation's Internet Access Agreement. You also certify that you are 18 years of age or older.

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