What
are the technological limitations placed on e-business processes today?
More than the technological limitations, it's the mindset limitations.
Most of the customers believe that they have to do e-business, but
they don't know how to go about it. The good news is that it is not
like those ERP days, when ERP was really hot, but it was constantly
handled by IT. In the e-business scene, CEOs of most companies are
talking about it. But when it comes to actually putting the money
where the mouth is, it becomes a bit difficult. Because these are
big projects. The stage is still that of education. Fortunately we
are working with some organisations, which are educating customers
as to why they should not ignore this media.
 E-business
is not going to replace your current business. That's very clear.
In fact, we tell them e-business is another channel for you to leverage,
how to get to the customer, how to meet the customer, how to keep
the customer, how to service the customer. It provides you a more
efficient way of doing that. The important thing is to understand
how they can leverage better their current offline business to the
online activity. That's where most of the education is happening right
now.
We did e-strategy for one of the companies many months back and we
recommended a certain step, and still they have not done anything
about that. They have even gone to the press saying that Satyam Infoway
helped them in doing that, but they haven't done anything yet. Each
company is at a different stage in terms of adaptation. It does require
investment, may be not as significant as an ERP implementation like
SAP or something like that, but it does require significant
investment. So it's not the technological limitation. It's more of
a mindset. Its more of a, "Will I be the first guinea pig?"
kind of worry.
Digital certification of signatures. Has this
helped reassure users on the issue of security of transactions?
Even before digital signatures, our solution from Sterling Commerce
provided a stamp as to who is actually doing the transaction. That's
more of the technology. Today digital signatures are used in the B2C
environment, rather than B2B. In India, even though the IT act has
come through, the implementation is still not clear. Because we are
yet to appoint a controller for digital signatures. The rules are
yet to be clear, as to who can provide, how can they provide, what
are the limitations and things like that. Those will really determine
how fast it's adapted.
In India it's not in place yet?
Not in place yet. We have been waiting for that for quite some time.
We have signed up with a company called Verisign, and there
is a company called Sayscript, which we own 100% right now.
We are expecting people to take a stake in that, so that it becomes
a standard. It will take some time before digital signatures become
the normal thing to do. Even in the US the act was passed recently.
Only now it has been made legal. We are not too far behind. We are
ready, whenever it happens we will be the first ones to support that.
How much of Chennai business is ready for e-business?
 We
have something called an e-readiness index, which measures each customer,
in terms of IT infrastructure, processes, customer orientation, geographical
and product spread, how complex the business is. All these factors
tell you whether it's required or not. If the business is very smooth
and you have almost two weeks of inventory in the pipeline, you don't
need e-business. If you are already having a negative working capital,
you don't need it. You might need it for different reasons like planning
for information rather than inventory saving. So you need to find
out why you need to do it. Those kinds of exercises need to be done
for each company. To determine whether they need it or not. We have
done projects for SRF, Henkel Spic, Ford... so we have worked
with a few companies, but industrial houses like the TVS group,
the Sanmar group, Amalgamations, Ashok Leyland etc. haven't
done anything yet.
Are we through with the game of the eyeballs?
Are we seriously looking at other parameters for the net? I
will relate it to any new technology or any new finding that people
go through in life. There was the gold rush, than the tulip rush.you
have all these rushes. Initially its so hot, people do not look at
fundamentals. They forget the basics, how businesses run and things
like that. I think its good that it happened so fast. It did not last
too long. People got hurt, hopefully not too many. What has happened
is good. Good money will start to flow in. A lot more reality checks
will be in place. So that castles will not be built in the air. Eyeballs
will still be there. End of the day, it's a question of monetising.
Like Jack Welch said the other day on CNBC, "It
doesn't matter what you have on the site, if you are unable to monetise
it, its not worth being there". Whether you are a newspaper
site, GE, Doordarshan or BNP. There has to be some level of
monetisation. Monetisation doesn't necessarily mean advertisement;
it has to have a monetary value. It has to have the ability to invoke
a transaction; it has to have the ability to sell itself. So it's
no longer for the sake of eyeballs. A lot more rational has to be
built in. In any business there will only be a few winners, and probably
four to five people will control 80% of the business, the next forty
will control 18% of the business and the rest will cover whatever.
In a recently concluded international advertising
convention, most people spoke of the net as 'the' medium for advertising.
Your views on this.
That is one other solution we are starting to offer our customers,
as to how they can actually leverage advertising on the net. Today,
people spend a lot of money on print media and TV. For them the Internet
is yet another media. Many of them do not understand how this media
works. So the good news on the net is we get feedback. Whereas the
other media, you are not quite sure. You have to depend upon numbers
that come once in a year. You have to depend on them to get some feedback
as to how your campaign went. Whereas the net being an interactive
media, that's one big advantage.
But advertising on the net is not for everybody. Unless you are on
the net yourself, there is no use advertising. So any company that
wants to advertise on the net should have the presence. There is no
use advertising, and when they click on the ad, you are not there.
It's not like a print ad. When the customer clicks on your ad, you
should be able to take him somewhere and give him something and then
make him transact. So it has to be a complete strategy. Advertising
doesn't come on its own. It has to come after you define your e-strategy.
That's the key. But advertising on the net will increase. Some people
are saying it will surpass any other media in the next five years.
As of today I will take it with a pinch of salt. But that's probably
closer to truth. This is where you get the users attention on a one-to-one
basis.
- Anuradha Sriraman
Photographs : Leslee Lazar |
