E-Commerce

The Impact of Technology on E-commerce

The Impact of Technology-Enabled Business Processes There is no denying technology’s effect on how we conduct business. In recent years, technology has become significantly more significant in all aspects of business, including sales and marketing. As a result, business processes must be re-engineered to incorporate a proactive strategy for using information and IT to build a competitive advantage over other organizations. However, in many instances, the functionality provided by sales and marketing technology only automates current processes. Therefore, methods must be clearly defined and well-proven.

Automating a poorly understood or followed process usually fails. Instead, technology must be an enabler to support an already sound sales and marketing strategy. Beyond automating sales and marketing capabilities, technology is now designed to provide professionals with a wealth of information about their company’s clients and markets. Companies can directly collect customer data, resulting in a competitive advantage. Online shopping is a prime example. If a customer makes a purchase, the transaction is completed, and revenue is generated. However, if a sales transaction is not made, the company still collects the shopper’s behavioural data and stores it in a marketing database.

The company then can segment and analyze this data to learn more about that particular customer’s shopping habits. We can investigate why this person did not purchase and what can be done differently to persuade them to buy their product. The company can now position the four Ps of marketing: product, price, promotion, and place to serve this customer better. The company’s process ultimately succeeds in developing a relationship with the customer. The company now knows more about the customers’ preferences and how to offer them. Consequently, the customer is vested in the relationship and is more likely to conduct business with that company.

The Shift to Relationship Marketing Though many of today’s marketing practices have evolved due to increasing technology, the marketing environment still centres around the four Ps of marketing described above. However, to remain competitive, companies must create a unique set of those four Ps that appeal to each customer and set them apart from their competitors. Target marketing is no longer an efficient use of marketing efforts because many resources can be lost to uninterested individuals while capturing potential customers. Because of the possible loss of support, there is a movement away from targeting markets to specific customers. What is now required is customer-oriented relationship marketing.

Many studies have shown that acquiring a new profitable customer can cost four to ten times as long as maintaining repeat buyers. These statistics are one of the driving forces behind the move to relationship marketing, focusing on customer retention rather than attraction. This type of strategy calls for a different marketing technique: customer- and information-driven instead of product-driven. With this in mind, marketers and business developers seek new ways to obtain, manage, and analyze their customers’ information.

As we increasingly find, one of the most effective ways of capturing and utilizing customer data for marketing and sales efforts is by investing in technologies such as customer relationship management systems (CRMs). According to the Gartner Group, the Benefits of a Customer Relationship Management System, CRM describes methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way. Thus, CRM is the most extensive compilation of IT concepts from a technological standpoint. Furthermore, it involves moving the ownership of customers away from individual departments to the enterprise level. Besides, it focuses on best serving each customer’s needs personally rather than serving the needs of target markets.

Experts still debate the primary functionalities of CRMs, which often vary depending on the system’s intended purpose. However, the high-level buckets of CRM capabilities can be categorized according to customer service, marketing, and sales. Although customer service is essential to customer relationship management, companies primarily employ companies who sell products and have call centres and websites to market and sell their merchandise. For example, most consulting firms are in marketing and selling professional services. Therefore, it results in their consultants.