The Benefits of e-Business

The Internet and related technologies can change the way you develop and conduct your business processes, making them more time and cost efficient. They can diversify your marketing channels and, ultimately, help you increase your business revenue.

The Internet levels the playing field for small businesses. That is, it allows small business operators to compete on equal footing with larger businesses in the same industry. Through the Internet, your small business can distribute information online to a global audience, immediately, with little out of pocket expense. This means you‘ll reach more clients or customers in a shorter period of time.

It gives you the ability to interact with your clients and customers in new ways, putting power in the hands of the buyer, giving your clients or customers more choice than they‘ve ever had before. And finally, the Internet gives you, the seller, the ability to readily assess your online business practices and modify them on the fly to ensure they meet the needs of your clients/customers.

In short, you can use the Internet to:

The Benefits of ICT and e-Commerce to Business

The following are key reasons for the application of ICT‘s and e-commerce within the local business environment:

Market intelligence

The ability to quickly gather information from the marketplace and embed insights into products and services

Competitive Intelligence

The ability to use and analyze publicly available information and competitive trending as a basis for decision making, enabling real time response to the competitive environment

Customer Service

The ability to provide quicker service response times and flexible dispute resolution; also the ability to automate front-line customer service response enabling CSR‘s to give greater attention to more complex or consequential matters.

Opportunity Recognition

The ability to access information on a global scale (electronic exchanges, market reviews, industry reports etc), resulting in the uncovering of unmet market needs, requests for service (incl. RFP‘s) and other potential business opportunities

Price Discovery

The economies of the Caribbean have traditionally been and are largely still exporters of primary agricultural or mineral goods. With ICT it is now possible to follow these products up-market and understand the price-level escalation dynamic closer to the end consumer. Informed business cases can then be made to deepen processing capability in order to sell directly into end user markets (disintermediation) and as such capture the full value and rents available along the product/industry value chain.

Enhancing Transparency

Public business to business electronic exchanges, government e-procurement and other types of electronic marketplaces add an additional level of transparency to economic activity while decreasing average transaction costs. This type of infrastructure and economic climate can be a key factor / motivator for investment by international firms as the decreased level of corruption also lowers their cost of doing business and enables them to link local operations to their global activity.

"While wiring every town with broadband connections may yield wide ranging benefits, it may not deliver the same economic impact as connecting every firm in the tourism industry to a digital marketplace."

• Collect vital business information related to your customers and competitors. The Internet is a valuable research tool and, as a readily accessible information medium, its ability to allow you to remain competitive in your industry should not be underestimated.
• Increase awareness about your company. Even if you are not considering selling online, having<