E-Commerce Strategies

"When an organization includes an e-commerce system as part of a larger, internal digital nervous system, e-commerce provides much more than just an electronic sale."

"Competition from traditional and nontraditional players, the opportunity to lower costs, and the opportunity to reach new customers faster and easier than ever before are just some of the factors driving e-commerce."

"Electronic commerce initiatives offer many benefits for an organization, its customers, and its suppliers. It's important, however, to understand the realities of electronic commerce before starting e-commerce initiatives."

"Costs are obstacles in any initiative, but e-commerce initiatives are slightly different because of the unknowns associated with both the technology and marketing strategy."

"Today, if an organization does not invest in e-commerce, it may go out of business. Still, some organizations may not exactly know how to quantitatively justify the project."

"Many pieces of hardware and software, both inside and outside the organization, need to work together to enable business-to-business and business-to-consumer exchanges of transaction data."

"Building an IT infrastructure to meet e-commerce challenges also involves looking outward to Internet hardware and software standards."

"Whether your market is business-to-business or business-to-consumer, you should strive to present visitors with a visually appealing, easy-to-use page that gives them access to the information they need quickly."

"Best practices for e-commerce initiatives change almost daily as the Internet continues to grow and change rapidly."

"Perhaps the biggest brand management problem posed by electronic commerce is gaining and retaining trust in a brand."

"The BizTalk Framework, Microsoft's industry consortium, provides a set of standards and an open community for discussing ways to utilize extensible markup language (XML) for enhanced e-commerce performance."

"Microsoft's products enable organizations to work collaboratively and to link their digital nervous systems, using Web technology to create a seamless flow of information between business partners and customers."

"A portal is much more than a search tool, although a good search tool is always part of an effective portal."

"Forming effective partnerships is critical to the success of any organization working in the electronic commerce arena. No such thing as the status quo exists anymore."