e-commerce

According to Webmergers.com, it estimated around 210 dot-coms failed in 2000. There are just a few of dozems of web commerce, content and services companies that shut down. They failed because of their customer service meltdown, inadequate order fulfillment, insufficient budget, channel conflict or failure to globalize.

Some on them might was inadequate attention to customer service, whether by telephone or e-mail, is a surefire way to lose customers. A compny with a well-tuned inventory-management system for physical store cant expect that same system to hold up for e-commerce sales. They might missed shipment dates and failed to notify customers of shipping problems because online slaes is entirely different. Some of them might just predict that e-commerce need small bundle of fund to run this kind of business but its totally wrong. In view of just develop a web-site also requeire few million to establish. Some even more. Existing companies often leap into internet sales without considering their channel partners. Conflict of channel will always happen among of them. Finally, in e-commerce world must be globalized, if you cant do it, then you difficult to success but globalize always involve in million figure to survive, cant you make it?

E-Commerce failures - examples."E-tail pioneer Egghead.com is filing for bankruptcy protection and is selling its assets to retail chain Fry's Electronics, Egghead announced Wednesday [Aug 2001]. It is an example of a large sized company that failed - (but not completely since some business taken up by a larger more stable company) "Egghead failed to release their website until early 2000 when the dot.com boom had already been under way for some time. The only thing that their website offered at this time was high speed internet access... visitors to the website got very frustrated because Egghead didn't offer any of their products on-line nor could an existing customer inquire whether a certain product was available or not. Customers became very frustrated, sales were very low because of their lack of product offering. That's why Egghead failed in e-commerce's world.

Dell has applied the Internet to all aspects of customer relationships, from sales and marketing to order entry to technical support. From this, the company can provide self-service tools to customers so that they can order online, track order status, or solve a technical problem via the Internet or an extranet. These applications make Dell’s sales and call center staff more effective and productive and reduce staffing enquired to support a growing customer base.

Dell has its efficient supply chain management. Due to this, Dell is capable of shipping a PC within 24 hours of receiving an order from customer. From this introduction of the internet and e-commerce has helped Dell improve their efficiency and profitability.

3. Save cost

The saving achieved by having customers interact with Dell electronically instead of on the phone is significant. The cost of a support call averages $12.20 for the industry, while the cost is close to zero if the customer uses online support. Even if the customer goes online and then calls in, the customer may be able to give the technician better information for a faster and more accurate diagnosis because of the help received online.

4. Broad investment

As of July 2000, Dell has invested $700 million in about 50 internet companies with different area such as broadband and wireless communications, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce, server and storage infrastructure and e-consulting. These investments help Dell access to new technologies without expanding its own R&D activities, and may pay off financially if the companies go public.