|
|
What is Ecommerce
In the good old days, business was pretty simple. I
had a pig, you had some wool; we showed up at the market and haggled, then I
went home to knit a cardigan while you whomped up some barbecue.
Nowadays we don't have to show up at the market, and we don't even need physical goods or currency to conduct business.
Ecommerce is the most recent step in the evolution of business transactions. It replaces (or augments) the swapping of money or goods with the
exchange of information from computer to computer.
Within a few years, Internet has turned businesses upside down, be prepared or die. This might seem like an over-hyped statement – but it is not.If we look around,
even today, the Internet is fundamentally changing the way companies operate – from conducting business internally to conducting business with trading
partners. Entirely new companies and business models are emerging. It is helping companies to lower costs dramatically across their supply and demand
chains, take their customer service into a different league, enter new markets, create additional revenue streams and redefine their business relationships. If
a company does not use the Internet to do any or all of these things in the near future, it will be destroyed by competitors who are leveraging the power
of the Internet to conduct business, which literally means e-commerce or electronic commerce is the most crucial reality of today’s business
scenario.
|
|
With the ability to monitor inventory, transactions, and suppliers in a single platform, Pulse Commerce provides a comprehensive cloud-based inventory management solution. General features include:
- Customer & Volume Pricing
- Integrated Real-Time Advanced Inventory with Commitment Management
- Multi-location Inventory and Fulfillment
- Kits/Bundles with "Real-SKU" component inventory tracking
- Inventory Costing and Profitability Analysis
- Both Inventory and Non-Inventory Items Supported
- Complete Audit Trail for Inventory Adjustments
- Stock Transfer and Adjustments
- Pick, Pack, Ship
- Advanced Shipping & Receiving
There is no need to separate systems and confuse warehouse procedures; your new system is intuitive and updates automatically. As soon as a product sells, the inventory updates and any items out of stock can be automatically hidden. Demand-based reporting means that your company can watch organic changes in inventory, and better anticipate the market and customer needs. Maintain the right level of inventory for your business – never be out-of-stock, and never have too much unsold inventory lying around. Selling in this way allows for improved KPI monitoring and makes it simple to achieve sales goals. Specifically, the Pulse Commerce platform monitors stock on hand, stock on order, and supplier performance. You’ll gain accurate, instant information on inventory location, movement and valuation, receipt of goods, sale, and return of goods; this keeps your vendors and suppliers in the loop, and shows you exactly where and how efficiently the products are selling. Get a leg up on the competition by selling anytime, through any channel; online marketplaces, brick-and-mortar locations, kiosks, third-party online stores/drop shippers, comparison shopping engines, etc. Request a free demo of our fully-integrated inventory management system, and start focusing more attention on your customers, and less on warehouse headaches.
Give me some examples.
Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, is a very broad term. E-commerce conducted between businesses differs from that carried out between a business and its consumers. For
business-to-consumer e-commerce, the Web has become the dominant pipeline. Think Amazon.com The Company offers lots of books for sale on its Web site.
Consumers find what they like, type in their credit card number and unpack the books a few days later. Conducting individual stock trades, moving money from
checking to savings or tracking an overnight package delivery via the Internet are other examples.
|
Business-to-business e-commerce takes many forms, some of which have been around for years.
Electronic data interchange (EDI) is a format for exchanging business information over private networks. It was created to automate and speed the
exchange of information between companies that regularly did business together. For example, on Tuesday your computer can automatically tell my computer that
you've shipped the 500 pallets of wool I ordered. Then on Wednesday my computer acknowledges your shipping confirmation and tells you that I'll mail you a few
thousand pigs on Thursday. No money actually changed hands electronically here but plenty of business data did. If your business and my business do
transactions like this often, the automated system beats having our clerks stand by the fax machine every day and then retype the information they receive
into our respective computer systems.
|
|
EDI is still used, and there are many other mechanisms for business interaction, such as electronic catalogs and electronic
payment systems. The Web plays an expanding role just as it does in consumer e-commerce. For instance, you might let your office-supply provider put an
ordering page on your intranet.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|