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E-fun And The Art Of E-business

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DQI Bureau
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My friend and colleague,

Aruna Jayanthi, embodies the modern day spirit of an Indian Software

Professional. She works 14 hours a day, six days a week, parties into

the wee hours of the morning and catches up on sleep every Sunday. Caught

in the exciting web of the World Wide Web, Aruna, whose imagination,

like many others', has been set on fire by the ever-changing technologies

and commercial possibilities of the internet, has come up with the concept

of a mega portal- e-fun.com.

This will be the

place to be for all fun-lovers in the new millennium. A place where

everything from virtual courtships to video-on-demand to music downloads

to every form of infotainment and edutainment will be available at a

mousetouch! Where every citizen will be able to customize his needs

for entertainment and can set up templates that will capture every means

of amusement appealing to his specific brand of funny bone. Will Indian

discos ever be the same again?






Widespread spectrum


Three years ago, when the concept of Information Superhighway was just
beginning to touch Indian shores, I wrote and spoke about the future

life of the Indian citizen, who would learn, earn, communicate and virtually

live on the Net. With the number of netizens in India growing exponentially,

and worldwide trends beginning to be replicated in our country, those

predictions seem to be coming alive much earlier than anybody could

have predicted. My daughter Karuna, an ICSE student in Mumbai, tells

me that all except two of the kids in her class, do their projects and

ICSE exam practice off the net and a friend of hers, Sameer Merchant,

has a full-fledged web site, which provides school kids opportunities

to relax, do serious learning and communicate with other kids around

the world. Even my friend, Ajit Balakrishnan, the pioneer of ecommerce

in India reports that over 2,500 cinema tickets are being sold every

week through rediff.com. And the popular site, zeecineawards.com, which

has been created and hosted by an enthusiastic Aptech Web Development

team, reported over a million hits within two days of its launch and

is targeting a 25 million hit record before the event is over.






What are the implications of these early trends and concepts for every
Indian citizen and Indian business? First and foremost, we all need

to look beyond the visible end of ecommerce, the business-to-consumer

segment, which has been heavily publicized, thanks to popular sites

like amazon.com and rediff.com, and realize that there are success stories

and breathtaking possibilities in every segment. If e-bay.com can provide

electronic auctioning capabilities in the consumer-to-consumer space,

all used car purchase and sales showroom can shut down their yards.








Similarly, if Priceline.com can enable a traveller to ask for and get
a discounted ticket between American cities, a Delhi-Mumbai traveller

will soon specify the date of travel and price, and get a ticket delivered

to him. A ticket that matches his specification, through a consumer-to-business

transaction.






And of course, the oft-quoted success stories of Fedex, Intel and Cisco
in the business-to-business segment should and will inspire many Indian

businesses to rethink their age-old business models and integrate their

ERP implementations with a seamless web interface. One that enables

every stakeholder, including customers, suppliers and subcontractors

to become a part of the new e-corporation with access to all relevant

data and capability to complete the business transaction through Electronic

Data Interchange. Already, there are success stories like ICICI Bank

which makes this transition to be happen on our own shores.






New approach


However, there is no glossing over the fact that this is a new paradigm
of doing business and requires a complete reorientation of mindsets

and business processes. I was amused to participate in a discussion

after a recent conference in Delhi where the excited CIO of one of India's

large services companies was bemoaning the fact that while adequate

hits were being registered from overseas residents on their web site,

the internal organizations took the usual three weeks and more to respond.

Pat came the solution from his boss, "Print out the emails on pink

paper and circulate copies so that they take more prompt action."






The paper culture is so deeply ingrained in all of us that it will need
a total rethinking to embrace and benefit from the new model and opportunity

that e-business presents. A clear goal has to be set for expanding the

served market as well as extending the scope of customer service and

stakeholder interaction through the internet. The web site which for

many corporations has been nothing more than a token extension of marketing

in traditional Static Print Media, will have to be made more interactive

and receptive to customer feedback. The interfacing of the external

web sites and the internal business processes has to be made seamless

through extensive use of groupware technologies. The entire functional

integration has to be made Customer-facing with enough collaborative

working to ensure quick handoffs between departments, without non value

adding activities or orthogonal approval processes that may lead to

delays. And the loop has to be closed with the



customer by integrating electronic payment capabilities with appropriate
controls to make the transaction truly meaningful and complete.






GANESH NATARAJAN,


MD, Aptech Ltd, and Director, Hexaware Group.


ganeshn@aptech.ac.in

















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