E-Commerce: The Future Beckons

Monday, 5 December, 2011

Internet has revolutionized modern day business like never before and has been instrumental in streamlining business processes and shrinking distances across the globe. This has meant that scouting for business partners, finalizing business deals, ordering for material, billing and collections and customer support for several businesses is now just a click of the button away.

E-commerce – concept and business benefits:
E-Commerce or Electronic Commerce connotes the use of electronic modes like the internet to carry our business transactions. More than mere buying and selling, it covers the entire gamut of business transactions from pre-sales to execution, carried out by mere clicks of a button on any electronic media. Commonly used e-commerce forms include B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer). Business and commercial applications carried out on the e-commerce platform include:

• Payment and / or receipt of funds online
• Online shopping
• Newsgroups and online chatting / messaging
• Data interface and transfers, like teleconferencing
• Electronic shopping and ticketing

E-Commerce is now increasingly used globally for improving and sustaining business transactions. It accounts for bulk of the commercial transactions carried out in North America and Europe and the trend is catching on in Asia as well. Countries like India and China have been the major harbingers of the e-commerce revolution in Asia.

Security aspects:
Compared to conventional trade, e-commerce offers the benefits of quick processing and execution and traceability across the chain. This also means that transactions are carried out across public domain media which may be prone to several security concerns. Online hacking has assumed menacing proportions which has meant that businesses are spending more than ever before in keeping out hackers and protect their data and accessibility on the electronic media.

Notwithstanding the risk of hacking resulting in compromising data integrity, there is no doubt that e-commerce is here to stay. The potential benefits of the medium far outweigh the security issues and are being widely used in several applications and requirements line online books, payment gateways, online trading, electronic fund transfers and much more. So go ahead and take your first steps and bathe in the glory that e-commerce has to offer.