Preface

Recent studies suggest that e-commerce is maturing, taking its place as just another retail channel, and riding the same ups and downs as any of the traditional channels. It is a piece of news with mixed implications. Perhaps by now, some of the lingering fears about e-commerce are fading. Or, perhaps e-commerce is losing momentum. The studies raise more questions than they answer! But, regardless of whether e-commerce needs to recapture, maintain, or increase its momentum, there are ways that e-commerce may enhance its appeal. E-commerce may take advantage of technologies designed to make communications, self-service, and human-computer actions more natural. E-commerce may avail itself of technologies such as speech recognition and text-to-speech, encompassing the functionality of interactive voice response, and talking Web voice portals. Then, e-commerce may train its ears to recognize calls to even greater success.

If you accept that e-commerce is enjoying growth because consumers perceive that it is secure and convenient, you might ask whether e-commerce could enjoy even more growth if its security and convenience could be enhanced. No doubt e-commerce could stand improvement in these respects. No doubt e-commerce users harbor lingering fears over credit card usage and the safety of personal information.

To the extent there is interest in improving e-commerce, and in promoting additional growth, there are opportunities for those who may offer communications solutions. For example, communications solutions could broaden the appeal of e-commerce, helping it encompass more than PC-based, browser-mediated interactions. E-commerce could be more natural. It could accommodate the natural, human preference to speak and listen, instead of confining users to point-and-click interfaces.

The most obvious solution—broad deployment of multimedia PCs, accompanied by a proliferation of e-tailers capable of managing multimedia sessions, not to mention wider availability of residential broadband connectivity—is hardly the only solution. Many potential customers will lack multimedia terminals and broadband connectivity for some time to come. In any case, many potential customers will balk at always being tied to a desktop PC. They’ll insist on being mobile, relying on mobile phones and telemetric-equipped autos. And, whether they’re driving or not, potential customers won’t be too eager to navigate the limited interfaces presented by tiny keypads and tiny screen displays.

For customers relying on phones or mobile devices, convenience may come down to whether they’ll be able to speak and listen their way through commercial transactions. Such convenience, although seldom raised in mainstream discussions of e-commerce, is a subject of abiding concern in the communications solutions marketplace. In this marketplace (through applications such as interactive voice response [IVR]), you’re already familiar with the challenges of voice-enabling customer interactions. And, you’re already familiar with the trade-offs posed by efforts to maximize convenience. Furthermore, you’re also already familiar with the need to consolidate the management of multiple customer interaction channels.

Although maximizing convenience is a laudable goal, so is minimizing expense. Attempts to negotiate this trade-off have had mixed success. For example, IVR has often been deployed in such a way that customers could be forgiven for wondering if IVR isn’t more convenient for the seller than it is for the buyer. Seemingly interminable scripts, intricate menus, and incessant prompts for Touch-Tone input have given IVR a less than stellar reputation. And yet, although IVR may be deployed as a convenience to contact centers and conserving costly live-agent resources, it may also be deployed sensibly, with restraint, extending the hours of business operations beyond the workday, providing for agent intervention when agents are available. Moreover, IVR may be subordinated to highly integrated customer relationship management (CRM) applications, allowing contact centers (or interaction centers) to accommodate shifting customer preferences with respect to communications media, while ensuring consistency in the fulfillment of customer demands, regardless of which communications channels convey these demands.

With the preceding in mind, this book introduces the issues involved in bringing business to the Internet—the obstacles to online commerce as well as the advantages. After the issues have been laid out, I will explain how advances in cryptography make it possible to transmit business information across unreliable and insecure networks, reliably and securely. After the general concepts have been presented, different current commercial schemes and systems are discussed in their proper perspective. After the various schemes have been examined, other relevant and related issues can be discussed, including digital currencies, techniques for marketing on the Internet, and related services available to the online merchant.

Appendixes include an Internet and networking glossary, a guide to locating the most current and complete electronic commerce resources on the Internet, a list of EDI codes, a complete listing of the major e-commerce conferences and trade shows, and several e-commerce case studies.

Chapter 1: What Is Electronic Commerce?

In a remarkably short time, the Internet has grown from a quirky playground into a vital, sophisticated medium for business, and, as the Web evolves further, the threshold for conducting successful business online will move increasingly higher. Online consumers are flooding to the Internet, and they come with very high expectations and a degree of control that they did not have with traditional brick-and-mortar companies. Businesses, too, are rushing to join the Internet revolution, and new, viable competitors are emerging in all industries.

This chapter details introductory strategies and priorities for electronic commerce, which sets the stage for the rest of the book. It also describes how the platform, portal, and partners are critical to solving business problems in the four most common areas of electronic commerce: direct marketing, selling, and service; value chain integration; corporate purchasing; and financial and information services.