ecommerce business opportunity

White Paper 3 Electronic Commerce the challenge for UK business First published in 199?. Updated Thursday 20th March 2003 Contents 1. Foreword: A Government View 2. Introduction 3. The Opportunities 4. The Way Ahead 5. Conclusion 6. Case Studies 7. Appendix p3 p5 p6 p11 p16 p17 p20 - Page 2 - Foreword by Barbara Roche MP Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Small Firms, Trade and Industry, Department of Trade and Industry There seems little doubt that electronic commerce is set to be the next major development in the use of Information Age technologies. As the technologies mature, and solutions become available for particular problems and as businesses look for new ways to remain competitive, more and more companies are turning to electronic commerce. In this fast moving world where growth in on-line use, especially via the Internet, continues to increase apace, companies have been coming to terms with what it means for them. Many have seen it as a priority to get on-line themselves, to enable them to communicate electronically whether internally or with customers or suppliers. Some have established Web sites to get early experience of running and maintaining a presence on the Net and to understand the implications of, in effect, advertising themselves to the world. Others have gone further and are examining the interactive possibilities which a Web site can offer. The rise of electronic commerce illustrates just how important it is not to delay decisions on use of the new technologies. They have a crucial role to play in the future competitiveness of our companies. This is why I attach so much importance to our own Information Society Initiative Programme for Business which promotes informed use of the new technologies particularly by smaller businesses. This is also why I very much welcome this publication from InterForum. I particularly like its down to earth practical approach which will help companies not only to think about issues raised by electronic commerce but also help them to do something about it. As such it follows very much in the footsteps of InterForum's previous publication Your Route to the Networked Economy. As a global phenomenon, electronic commerce needs international co-operation and we are working both at home and abroad on a framework which will allow electronic commerce to develop freely, while ensuring adequate protection for the consumer. Our approach is that, when possible, rules should apply in the same way to electronic commerce as they do to more traditional commerce. But we recognise that it will sometimes be necessary to adapt or broaden existing rules. - Page 3 - During the UK Presidency of the European Union in the first half of 1998, and beyond, we shall be promoting the growth of electronic commerce as an essential factor contributing to competitiveness, growth and jobs. As part of our objective of making Europe work for the people, we will be taking forward measures, such as the creation of a European framework for digital signatures, to promote the development of electronic commerce in the single market. We will also be looking to the Commission to ensure full implementation of the single market in telecommunications. The opening up of Europe's telecommunications markets which this brings will lead to lower prices for consumers and businesses thus helping to boost the development of electronic commerce. Whether business to business or business to consumer, electronic commerce is not just a new medium for selling, it is a new market. This will have an impact on relationships with customers, suppliers and employees. For example electronic payments will have a significant effect on business accounting and financial systems. Pricing, production and marketing models will change. How businesses adapt to all this may well determine their chances of success into the next millennium. So companies need to be taking action now. Bearing this in mind, I was very much struck by some of the points made so clearly in this paper, in particular that electronic commerce is not about 'bolting technology onto a company's business'. This is absolutely right. Integration of electronic commerce into new and flexible business processes is what is important. Nor, as the paper says, is it just about Internet based transactions, but the creation of a complete customer relationship model encompassing customer acquisition, development and retention. While I very much agree with the paper that there is no easy way of predicting the speed with which organisations globally or in the UK adopt electronic commerce, it is no good waiting impassively until the scale of its use has increased. Companies must be ready to take advantage of electronic commerce as it grows and can do so only if their processes have been overhauled and their systems are already tested and running. Companies which are not in this position will discover there are competitors who are ready, competitors from distant parts of the globe they may never have heard of before. So as InterForum put it, electronic commerce, 'is not just an opportunity. It is rapidly becoming an imperative'. I hope therefore that companies will read this publication, discuss at the highest level the issues it raises and seek to take full advantage of the opportunities electronic commerce offers. - Page 4 - Introduction The era of the information age is upon us. Indeed, as the huge demand in use of both personal and business email demonstrates, the first wave of cultural adoption of the networked economy has already occurred. Without doubt the next phase, Electronic Commerce, is set to have a profound impact on business models, increasing efficiency and dramatically extending market reach. Electronic Commerce - or e-commerce as it is widely known - embraces a range of IT applications, through Internet applications, to integration with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) where applicable. In essence, e-commerce is the secure trading of goods, information or services and, in the main, that is conducted using Internet technologies. While in the UK the level of transactions occurring across the Internet is still low, those levels are set to explode as technology vendors deliver mature products to the market. 1998 will mark the first commercial availability of web phones. All the major mobile telephone vendors are launching products this year that will enable individuals to browse the web using their mobile phone. Considering that, while only one in 10,000 people worldwide has access to a PC, one in four has access to a phone, the significance of this development is clear. Most e-commerce experts believe that financial institutions will look to give away these devices in a bid to woo customers to their Internet banking services which will, obviously, give the market a huge boost. In addition, set top boxes that provide Internet access from standard televisions are also expected to gain widespread acceptance this year. This means that the large number of individuals who do not own home PCs will gain access to the web, which is one of the key drivers for the explosion of e-commerce. Indeed, it is expected that at least 40 percent of people will access the Internet from non PC devices by 2000. As a result, while sales over the Internet in 1996 were $733 million according to the analyst organisation Cowles/Simba Information (a small percentage of the $2 trillion spent annually on retail), projections are that sales are going to take off. The top 100 UK companies believe that 20 percent of their revenue will come from ecommerce transactions by 2000, according to the KPMG Electronic Commerce Report. In addition, figures from Killen and Associates maintain that by 2005 Internet transactions will increase to 17 billion, an amount that equals almost 50 percent of the credit card market. And while the media emphasis on e-commerce focuses on the business to consumer market, there are significant implications for UK companies from the burgeoning business to business e-commerce market. Another survey by Forrester Research says that by 2000, business to business transactions over the Internet will generate $66 billion - outstripping the business to consumer transactions which account for $37 billion and on line banking and financial services which will bring in an additional $23 billion. - Page 5 - What does it mean? The most fundamental issue to take on board is that e-commerce is not just about technology, it is not about bolting technology on to your business. Rather e-commerce can represent a different way of conducting business - both culturally and operationally - and technology merely provides the means of communicating this to the outside world. Cultural issues definitely come to the fore in the electronic world. What role, for example, will a travel agent play in a world where self service access to information is second nature? What then becomes their differentiator? Add to that the extension of services provided by holiday companies. Thomas Cook, for example, uses its web site to provide services and products related to the holiday you are booking: from currency and travel insurance to travel guides. e-commerce represents a massive opportunity for UK companies prepared to grasp the nettle and adapt to this different trading environment by adopting new and flexible business practices and reaching out to new markets, new customers and new suppliers. However, for those who fail to react in time, e-commerce represents the ultimate threat: traditional ways of conducting business will have no place in the networked economy. The Opportunities e-commerce is not just about Internet based transactions. It is the creation of a complete customer relationship model - whether the customer is the consumer or another business – encompassing customer acquisition, development and retention. Electronic Commerce can respond to the rhythms or buying patterns of consumers. A properly developed solution can expand and contract as business conditions dictate. For example, Eaglestar Direct was able to receive tens of thousands of prospective enquiries through its web site without employing any additional resource in their call centres. Wells Fargo Internet Banking solution has 200,000 customers and is projected to grow to 2,000,000 by the year 2000 without any additional cost. Improving profitability There are three key areas of potential benefit to be derived from the approach: improved levels of customer service, increased sales volume and reduced operating costs. To achieve real long term benefits, however, it is important to look for improvements in all three of these areas - companies focusing on only one, such as operating cost reduction, are likely to miss out on short term business opportunities and long term market position. This is because e-commerce demands innovation within business. It provides the opportunity to deliver existing products to completely new markets, new products to existing markets, indeed to evolve radical new business models. Extending the ability to find customers, businesses and products has huge ramifications on how an organisation interacts with its customers. - Page 6 - In fact, this is not just an opportunity. It is rapidly becoming an imperative because however unique you may believe your business, product or service to be, in a global economy it is bound to have competition and, more often than not, competition able to derive a lower cost workforce or sustain lower margins. The use of the Internet as a delivery medium fundamentally reduces the barriers to market entry, thus creating new competition both from start up companies but, far more challenging, from familiar, trusted brands moving into your marketplace. On the plus side, however, e-commerce enables organisations to deliver a better quality of service to customers through increased speed of response, significantly enhanced information about customer needs and through making information more readily available to them. Customers - be they consumers or other businesses – can find out about your products, order them, receive confirmation of the order and delivery times, pay for the goods and then receive follow up customer service interaction, all electronically creating a much smoother, more tailored and more efficient transaction. Business to Business An important dimension of the e-commerce story is the desire to smooth supply chains. While EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) has played a role in this over the past decade it has severe limitations - most notably cost, inflexibility and an inability to add anything to the process other than the basic transaction. Increasingly the larger organisations will drive their suppliers or partners to integrate into their businesses electronically. For example, insurance company Guardian Royal Exchange has introduced remote video inspection of vehicles for damage assessment. Rather than send an inspector to the local body shop, the repairer has a video kit which is linked via ISDN to the insurance company. This approach speeds up claims, reduces time and cost for the insurance company - but, critically, the insurer is insisting that body shops adopt this technology. The driver for the large organisations to encourage electronic business to business commerce is obvious. Huge numbers of suppliers create a significant cost overhead for companies. One option has been to reduce the number of suppliers but this can leave a company vulnerable to individual supplier failure. To reduce the cost of management per supplier is far more appealing and this is a major driver for electronic commerce: using automation software across the Internet to streamline processes and increase efficiency whilst reducing costs. "My conviction has increased that in Electronic Commerce we have a massive and beneficial instrument for change. The businesses that are going to survive are those that are going to adapt and change fast." - Sir John Harvey-Jones Key questions What is the implication for your company if your suppliers or customers adopt ecommerce? Will you lose out if you can't communicate? What about the opportunities? If your business partners are looking to reduce costs by automating many of the processes of communication with their partners, how can you leverage - Page 7 - the approach to gain efficiencies? And does that mean you can now take on additional business without the attendant increase in overheads? There are opportunities for lateral thinking organisations to exploit. Take the car rental company which has made its webpage available on BT's internal intranet. Now, when an individual wants to hire a car, they go directly to that web site. Their details are already held, covering whether or not they are authorised to hire a car, the profile of vehicle they are permitted and, from historical details, the type preferred. The deal can be struck there and then. For BT this smoothes the requisition process - the invoice does not have to go via the individual for acknowledgement but can go straight to accounts because BT knows no unauthorised personnel can hire a vehicle. And for the rental company it adds value and improves quality of service. Public Administration will also play a part in driving organisations towards electronic business. In the UK, government is intent on delivering much more of its information and service provision electronically. Government information can already be accessed electronically through government.direct. The DVLA is piloting a system for vehicle licence renewals with fleet firms over the web. There is also a move afoot to ease the process of setting up a new company. Rather than fill in numerous - and repetitive forms - for VAT, employee regulations and so on, using the web, any common information will be automatically duplicated across the relevant forms and forwarded to the correct department. The electronic commerce wave is most definitely upon us and any business that attempts, Canute like, to overcome the wave faces a damp future. Instead the advice is to embrace the networked economy and exploit the opportunities that e-commerce offers. To do so, however, your organisation needs both the willingness and ability to change its business processes. If you are going to deal electronically with others in the supply chain it does alter how you structure your business and it affects everything from the production of goods and services to the kinds of information you have available; from how you process credit transactions to how you allow customers to interrogate your database. The fundamental barrier to a successful adoption of e-commerce is understanding its impact on your business and how you can redesign your processes to meet the evolving - not static - needs of your customers. The Government is in the process of building a network of local support centres around the country - currently around 60 are operational, rising to 80 over the next few months - designed to provide independent advice to SMEs on marketing, cost control and quality of service and examine ways in which technology can help them to accomplish those. The Challenges There is great potential for use of the Internet as a business tool. However, some concerns need to be overcome, particularly in the area of confidence. Confidence on the part of the consumer and supplier is critical to its success. - Page 8 - Organisation: A commitment to e-commerce demands senior management vision and understanding - it is not an issue that can be left to marketing or IT departments alone. You need to set up a programme that outlines how the organisation will evolve within the networked economy, embracing the issues of marketing, technology, training and resources. Integration: The point of customer contact - the web front end – needs to fully integrate with existing systems, Sales Order Processing, purchase ledgers and so on. Technology: Many companies have held back on their investment in e-commerce due to a widespread perception of the lack of security standards and methods of ensuring authorisation and authentication. Indeed a survey from management consultants KPMG revealed that more than 60 percent of organisations considered security to be the main barrier to them using the Internet for e-commerce. Firewalls and the use of encryption have become common ways of improving the security of Internet based transactions. However, e-commerce demands additional security levels.  Authentication: how do users ensure that both the potential customer and the potential merchant are who they say they are? One of the major concerns surrounding this issue is automated fraud, whereby a large number of card numbers are systematically intercepted for illegal use. In this instance the genuine card holder does not know their card number has been intercepted and therefore cannot report this. Without authentication the fraudster can masquerade as the genuine card holder with neither the merchant nor the card holder knowing until issue of the cardholder's transaction statement. To combat this Visa and Mastercard have jointly developed the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol which uses Certification Authorities to address the key issue of authentication. SET is a multi-party protocol that secures communication between all five parties in a payment card transaction - the card association, cardholder, cardholder's financial institution, merchant and the merchant's financial institution. The SET standard has been ratified but most proponents will be adopting C-SET (SET II). Critical to the implementation of SET systems is the need for Certifying Authorities high level financial institutions who will authorise potential merchants - and Internet Payment Gateways. The infrastructure for certification is maturing: Inter Clear Services Limited, a joint venture between Card Clear and JCP, was the first Certificate Authority in the UK announcing a commercial service at the start of 1997. - Page 9 - Thousands of certificates have already been delivered and their adoption by users of e-commerce sites is growing rapidly. The market for certificates is expected to develop as merchants and banks require certificates for their servers.  Non-repudiation: the mechanism by which you cannot deny having sent or received transaction data. Trust is an important part of any trading arrangement. Not being able to deny that a purchase order was received or other communication accepted and acknowledged is an essential factor in e-commerce. There are two distinct areas which are important: Repudiation of Origin - where a disagreement could arise as to whether a particular party originated a certain item; and/or disagreement as to the time or origination. Repudiation of Delivery - covering if and when a particular item was delivered. The communication protocol of the Internet (TCP/IP) includes a mechanism where components of a message (packets) are kept in sequence, or rejected if damaged. It does not ensure their delivery. The process of guaranteeing receipt of a packet is known as receipting and this can be used to provide non-repudiation. Receipting is easy to forge but a 'signature' from a digital certificate at the transaction level ensures greater security. "The introduction and widespread adoption of SET will help to ensure secure credit card transactions are possible across the Internet. This will give many individuals and organisations the reassurance they need to start buying and selling online." Andy Thomas, InterForum Council Member Payment Systems: A myriad of payment systems has caused confusion in the marketplace to date but standards are emerging - the key is to ensure the payment system you adopt is flexible. - Page 10 - The Way Ahead There are several key steps to e-commerce:        Develop a strategic plan Identify the appropriate IT networking infrastructure Engage in a pilot Link the pilot to business strategy Redesign business processes to gain benefit Learn through experience Integrate the system with existing and evolving infrastructures. The basic steps in setting up the electronic business are outlined in Figure 1. A strategic plan is essential if you are to exploit the potential of e-commerce. And the first question has to be: why are we doing this? Are we first? How will the customer react? Assess the market size, customer needs - and consider what your competition is doing in this area. The plan must be business oriented, mapping on to the fact that any move to embrace e-commerce has to be a board led decision: this is not about technology, the technology is the enabler not the reason for investment. Part of that strategic plan should encompass a business impact survey. If you make a percentage of your goods available on the web how are you going to deliver them? And what is the customer's perception of your brand - a company that has a high street emphasis on high volume goods with great choice will be in danger of confusing its brand if it only makes a few, high cost items available on its web site. So how will the business processes need to be redesigned to support the web based sales? Plus, how are you going to integrate the all important customer information gained at the web site into your business to continue to evolve the product set and tailor it to the customer needs? It is vital, at an early stage, to appoint a project manager who will be responsible for driving through the necessary IT developments and changes. The appropriate IT networking infrastructure must be identified. Equally essential, ensure that there are effective information and other support systems in place to support the electronic business. It may be possible to use an existing database, eg customer contacts, to help you provide information about customers to support new ways of marketing. You may need to establish a system to handle electronically all payments for goods and services. It is important to take a long term view and design processes to facilitate future change as efficiently as possible. Can the developments be undertaken by your own IT and data management teams or will additional resources be required? - Page 11 - The whole e-commerce solution needs to be integrated with your existing systems from distribution and fulfilment systems to customer facing systems - if it is to become an integral part of your business. First Steps in setting up the electronic business - Page 12 - - Page 13 - And developments in the use of voice over the Internet are enabling the integration of the web site with the call centre providing customers with the option to request a personal conversation with a sales person if they feel they need information that is not available on the web site. In a totally integrated system, a customer can either complete the transaction over the web as usual or, should they require information about a product not available on the web page, they can hit a button and their call is passed over the Internet to a call centre. The agent is screen popped the web page the customer is looking at and their details. Once the customer has described what they are looking for, the agent has the ability to send a relevant product description to the customer's web page - and any transactions are then completed verbally. This level of flexibility is one of the crucial aspects of successful web based trading. Indeed a recent Forester report identified that people to people (voice transactions) will still be demanded/generated by a considerable majority of Internet customers. More critically for those in the financial services marketplace is the need to provide a level of service which means that customer information is available in real time to branch staff, call centre operators and via an Internet banking service so that service levels are constant at each point of customer interaction. However, while the potential for reaching new markets is high, there is obviously a risk associated with e-commerce. And, for that reason, it is fundamental to embark on a pilot project. Questions about financial risk, technology risk, implementation and assimilation can best be answered by conducting a pilot and serves as the first step in the education process. "If you are going to test it - segregate it; if you are making it mainstream - integrate it." - Andrew Burke, InterForum Council Member In addition, many of the lessons being learnt on internal Intranets can also be relevant within the e-commerce environment - particularly business to business e-commerce. It is important to ensure your internal network infrastructure is geared up to support the electronic world and, for this reason, many companies may opt to use a hosted service initially both as a toe in the water and a chance to upgrade internal systems without missing out on the e-commerce opportunity. Speed is of the essence. Indeed it is generally agreed that the time span between initial strategic assessment to web site launch should be no more than six months. The market is moving so fast that, leave it any longer, and your initial assessment of customer needs is going to be dangerously out of date. This applies also to on going reviews. e-commerce is not a one off investment - it will become increasingly integral to the success of your business and, as such, needs to be reviewed and updated accordingly. Fundamental to the success of any e-commerce solution is to set correctly customer expectations. Let them know when goods are going to be delivered - and don't promise what you can't deliver. When moving from one supplier to the next requires a few seconds and a couple of mouse clicks, customer loyalty will be dangerously - Page 14 - fickle. And that means not only ensuring you have the technology in place to guarantee good performance at the web site but also responsiveness to customer enquiries, on time deliveries and carefully targeted follow up promotions. "So as InterForum put it, electronic commerce, is not just an opportunity. It is rapidly becoming imperative." - Barbara Roche MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Small Firms, Trade and Industry. - Page 15 - Conclusion So what happens if you don't embrace e-commerce? Over 50 percent of respondents to a survey conducted by JCP Computer Services believe that the Internet will affect their businesses within the next two years. And over 50 percent of respondents believe that e-commerce will affect their businesses over the next two years. There is no easy way of predicting the speed with which organisations globally or in the UK will adopt e-commerce. But it is clear that factors are combining to give ecommerce a significant boost: from the availability of mature technology components to the business drivers that demand new ways of remaining competitive. And, every day there are new companies launching services via the Internet, aiming for new customers and new markets. The speed at which this is evolving is unprecedented. It is becoming clear that an organisation without an e-commerce programme may struggle to make it to the next millennium. Those that do instigate an e-commerce programme, however, are well placed to take on the rest of the world in this global economy. You can be certain that e-commerce is the way ahead. One question remains: How soon is your organisation going to take advantage of the new opportunities that this presents? - Page 16 - Case Studies Waterstone's One of the most cited e-commerce success stories is 'amazon.com' the online book store. Recognising the new competition UK bookseller Waterstone's launched its web site in 1996 and not only countered the new threat but opened up previously untapped markets. The company had clear ideas about web based selling: it wanted the brand to carry through onto the web site, to be personal and friendly and to ensure that customers were in an environment that fostered enjoyment. That meant building in a lot of security into the system, as well as the right information, since the site is designed to provide not only information but acts as a sales and order fulfilment channel. The site is designed to draw customers smoothly through various options for choosing and ordering from thousands of different titles. Books are represented visually, by book jackets, representing the tactile experience of browsing through titles in the book shop. The system is used mainly by customers in the UK, Europe and the USA but a significant amount of new customers browse and order books from Asia, Australia and Africa. The site helps Waterstone's to communicate with customers, to analyse buying patterns and to identify new markets for English publications. For example, the significance of the Japanese market only really became evident once the web site went live. The ability to explore new markets has become particularly important, because business development can now take place at a fraction of its traditional cost, and without the traditional risks, such as investing in high street assets. There are a number of important lessons learnt by the company whilst creating the web site.  A complete set of data must be identified and presented in the right way from the beginning of the project. This includes working out how much of the visual material will be in digital format. Digital images of book jackets, for example, may not always exist and may need to be commissioned before titles can be put up on the web. No web site design can be cast in stone. Information has to change constantly and there is no copyright on how web pages either appear or are designed to be used. This is an important reason why, as web sites grow to contain more and more information, they need to be supported by scaleable technology.  Ideal Hardware In order to make even more information available to customers Ideal Hardware in 1989 started the process of developing an electronic catalogue to support their business of distributing data storage products, related peripherals and PCs. This was - Page 17 - called 'Profile' and was issued quarterly on a compact disk and contained full details about all 6,000 products that Ideal Hardware sold. Video clips were added in 1993. In order to keep information more up to date and devise some way of knowing who was using what information, Cromwell Media, a new media company, encouraged Ideal Hardware to go on-line. Using Bladerunner, a rapid application development tool for large Web site deployment, they were able to set up very quickly a Webbased product information system. called Profile On-Line. This created a new requirement. Ideal Hardware had to cope with taking orders generated from Profile On-line. Using Java, an on-line order entry system, known as BORIS, went live in December 1997. It allows customers to assemble an order with Boris as they move through Profile On-line. Customers see only their own specific price displayed from the underlying database. Boris is fully integrated with Ideal Hardware's internal Tetra Chameleon accounting system. This allows customers to check the status of their order at any time. The customer gets an automatic e-mail to confirm the order, to advise on split and back orders and, on the morning of delivery, to warn of arrival. Boris has released the sales force from low value business activity, allowing them to be better account managers, and be more productive at a higher level. Sales people get a report showing which of their customers has looked at what product and which page, together with their telephone number. They can start the day with a set of positive leads based on factual information. Swedbank Swedbank (Sparbanken Sverige) reacted to fierce competition when the Swedish Banking system was deregulated by establishing an interactive "virtual bank". They are seeking the custom of the younger generation. Students can interactively calculate budgets, loans, etc. Within the first two weeks of live operation the bank received 12000 e-mails, an indication that there was significant customer interest in using the medium. Italian State Railway The Italian State Railway (Ferrovie dello Stato) has developed an Internet application that enables travellers to view timetables and to organise their trip. In development is the means to permit reservations, credit card payments and actual ticket printing. Ideal for those of us who begrudge time in the ticket office queue. Fidelity Investments Fidelity Investments' Fidelity WebXpress website now offers the ability to switch between unit trusts or PEP investments - with the ability to buy more units or top up a PEP using either Switch or Delta debit card details to an online form. The site also allows you to analyse your holdings by creating portfolios to your own specifications - including the ability to produce graphs showing assets by fund, by asset class and by geographical industry breakdown. Other tools available include a currency conversion table, a glossary and help screens, and the site has links to Fidelity's main website and - Page 18 - fund pricing pages. These are updated on a daily basis with current net asset values and market news. This new UK service is initially on offer to existing customers, but the company expects to welcome new customers online as well at a later date, opening accounts and buying and selling without the need for signatures - other funds to date have required signatures to be sent by post - demonstrating the pace at which developments and market opportunities occur within this environment. - Page 19 - Appendix For further reading: Strategic Internet Marketing, by Tom Vassos, Que, 1996 The State of the Cybernation, by Neil Barret, Kogan Page Ltd 1997 The Digital Economy (Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence) by Don Tapscott, McGraw-Hill 1996 Electronic Commerce IMRG Market Report, Interactive Media in Retail Group, IMRG Ltd 1996 Useful World Wide Web Links: The following are links (URLs - Uniform Resource Locator) to suggested web sites to provide further information, ideas for business opportunities, or ideas for web page design: www.baynetworks.com/Solutions www.bt.com/business www.eca.org.uk (Electronic Commerce Association) www.ibm.com/e-business/what/how/ns.html www.isi.gov.uk (Information Society Initiative Programme for Business) www.itforall.gov.uk (IT for All Programme) www.interforum.org www.lucent.com/enterprise www.opentext.com www.marketplace.unisys.com/coolice/index.html www.microsoft.com/siteserver/commerce/default.asp www.springboard.net www.sun.com/e-commerce/solutions www.unisys.com/execmag Examples of electronic business www.buckinghamgate.com (shopping) www.eaglestardirect.co.uk (insurance) www.ecn.dk (publishing) - Page 20 - www.fs-on-line.com (travel) www.ideal.co.uk (distribution) www.nationwide.co.uk (banking) www.sparbanken.se (banking) www.waterstone.co.uk (bookselling) - Page 21 -