What is an E-marketplace anyway?
E-marketplace is a business to business web based venue, where buyers and sellers meet online, generate business leads and conduct business transactions. The e-marketplace features are tailored in a manner so that a large numbers of buyers and suppliers can be serviced as a community. A participant of an E-marketplace can be a buyer, a seller or both. Unlike an E-distribution portal which is oriented to assist suppliers selling their products or an E-procurement system which is focused on buyers solely, an E-marketplace is a platform which caters buyers and sellers equally. As a participant of an E-marketplace you are able to explore buying and selling opportunities, make sales offers and buy products and services, add products and services to aggregated e-catalog and use numerous other value added features.
E-marketplaces are tremendously beneficial to all businesses that decide to participate in them. However, the potential benefits that a company can accrue from an E-marketplace are directly proportional to the factor - how heavily the company uses the offered features of that E-marketplace. Naturally, a company that makes e-marketplace as its primary sales channel and integrates its sales resources to supply chain solutions of the E-marketplace avail more in sales and administrative overhead cost savings, reduced paper work, better customer service, reduced product distribution costs and online sales growth than a seasonal user of the e-marketplace.
A committed participant of an E-marketplace can benefit from and improve two primary factors of company productivity: Revenue Growth and Cost Savings.
Revenue Growth
Expand Customer Base
A seller, once registered with an E-marketplace, gets immediate access to a large community of prospective buyers of his products or services.
Revenue Increase from Existing Clients
Existing clients get faster and easier access to product information, quicker response to their requests, get better customer support and buy products online.
Revenue Increase from Value Added Services
Once an E-marketplace is set as primary sales channel, freed resources can be used to create more value added services for clients. Some of the services that the E-marketplace offers also can be utilized to generate more value.
Cost Savings
Order Processing Cost
The supply chain solutions of E-marketplace allow sellers to reduce order processing cost significantly. Studies show that cost of processing a purchase order can be reduced from US$ 70 down to US$ 6 only.
Sales and support costs
By automating sales and customer support processes companies can reduce over head costs over 25-30% easily.
Inventory keeping costs
Clearer visibility and forecasting ability allow companies considerably reduce inventory keeping costs.
Most executives agree that primary reason why they feel that the companies should participate in E-marketplace is its ability to streamline supply chain mechanism. Many inherent inefficiencies of supply chain process can be eliminated thanks to integrated to e-marketplaces supply chain solutions.
What sellers have to do in order to participate in E-marketplaces and reap numerous benefits that it can provide?
As most of the administrative and operational tasks are done automatically by the e-marketplaces, participation in them is not a difficult process.
These are the basic steps that a seller must take to participate in an E-marketplace:
Register
Registration might be an easy job of filling up a form. It is much better to take some initial preparations before doing this.
Choose a good login name: your login can be used by the E-marketplace to give you subdomain name, i.e. login.e-marketplace_name.com.
Profile: A well-written profile increases company image.
Logo: your logo helps you brand your company.
Add your products or services to E-catalog
Most E-marketplaces furnish with easy to use forms or wizards for sellers to add their products to E-catalog. As the product and service classification used in the E-catalogs often is an industry standard, it is important to spend some times to find the perfect subcategories for your products or services. If you have any doubt contact the customer support of the E-marketplace. Fill up as many given fields are there for a product as you can. The more information buyer gets right away the faster his buying decision would be.
Create offers
Most sophisticated E-marketplaces have various sales platforms apart from the E-catalog inclusion. Make general sales offers, time sensitive offers (hot offers ? with offer expiry dates) and auction offers of your products and services. Determine the terms and methods of price, payment and shipment.
Decide how you will handle portions of the supply chain that you have to do offline.
Although, most of the supply chain process can be done online, not all e-marketplace offer a complete end to end solution. You also have to figure out what part of your back office can be integrated to the E-marketplace.
About The Author
Nowshade Kabir, Ph.D., is the founder, primary developer and present CEO, of Rusbiz.com, a global business to business e-commerce portal with feature like storefronts, aggregated catalog, e-marketplace, trade leads, internal messaging system supply chain solutions, etc. With a doctorate in Information Technology, Dr. Kabir has worked an advisor to government projects and has over 12 years experience in International Trade. An author of many B2B and business related articles; he publishes a bi-weekly E-zine for online business community. You can subscribe to his newsletter free of charge from http://www.rusbiz.com.
There are so many metrics surrounding direct marketing. So many... Read More
In addition to Google's Froogle shopping service (still in beta),... Read More
Online customer service is still one of the most frequently... Read More
Do you have any product that has not been moving... Read More
Is there a difference between writing a landing page and... Read More
Nowadays, shopping online is a very common thing. Making your... Read More
As the mother of a teenage clothing fanatic I'm often... Read More
China's IT industry is expected to see a sales revenue... Read More
If you have little or no capital but you want... Read More
E-commerce is gaining pace! Research firm eMarketer predicts that 2003... Read More
Too often we charge ahead and treat the web as... Read More
Did you know that over 90% of all online orders... Read More
My previous article I wrote called "One Point Two Billion"... Read More
--Online Commerce--E-Commerce website is all about selling products and services... Read More
Publishing has always been a difficult business to promote successfully,... Read More
A beginner's guide to setting up a successful online store... Read More
Paypal is one of the wonders of the web. Never... Read More
Pakistan with highest growth rates in 1960s and bad politics... Read More
Nothing has helped international brokerage business more than the internet:... Read More
What is an E-marketplace anyway?E-marketplace is a business to business... Read More
Merchant Account BasicsA Merchant Account is a commercial bank account... Read More
For many businesses, e-commerce represents a tremendous method for generating... Read More
What does "helping your visitors" mean exactly?It means writing your... Read More
The chief criteria for judging an ecommerce shopping cart are... Read More
How much holiday shopping did you do on-line this year?... Read More
I have written at length about the need to anticipate... Read More
Global Insight, a leading economic and financial forecasting company, (formerly... Read More
I'm a plain man who uses plain thinking in devising... Read More
Have you ever asked to have your money refunded after... Read More
Your stock is tempting, your prices right - your ecommerce... Read More
To increase sales on your website, you must accept credit... Read More
SSL ("Secured Socket Layer") is a protocol used to... Read More
I recently published a short e-book called 'One Thing I... Read More
What would you do if you were sent an email... Read More
Greetings!Friends and relitives ask us all the time " How... Read More
You have probably heard many times how you should offer... Read More
This isn't the first time I have written about the... Read More
Did you know that 80% of all sales are made... Read More
Most people who get into business know what's involved. They... Read More
Global Insight, a leading economic and financial forecasting company, (formerly... Read More
Have you ever gone grocery shopping just before a holiday?... Read More
This may not be a popular view, but I think... Read More
The largest cost and concern of an internet business is... Read More
The Millennium ExperienceA successful project is one that delivers on-spec... Read More
Open Source applications can bring unique value to business owners.... Read More
Inherent (or Business) RiskInherent Risk is the risk that exists... Read More
The use of electronic cash as a means of transacting... Read More
Thanks to the ubiquity of the internet, online virtual businesses... Read More
The chief criteria for judging an ecommerce shopping cart are... Read More
Recently I went looking for an online merchant account, with... Read More
Many surfers already know about Froogle, Google's shopping portal that... Read More
What is an E-marketplace anyway?E-marketplace is a business to business... Read More
Once your website has secured an order, you have to... Read More
According to NOP World, 48% of all Internet users have... Read More
All of the long, grueling nights and an unknown number... Read More
As the mother of a teenage clothing fanatic I'm often... Read More
For some people, shopping online is as normal as driving... Read More
For many businesses, e-commerce represents a tremendous method for generating... Read More
Over the past several years, the Internet has emerged as... Read More
There are many tools available to a webmaster to analyse... Read More
Usable Shopping Carts Increase SalesE-commerce has been around since 1993... Read More
When most people think of a retirement gift, they think... Read More
1. Balance - You want to find a directory rich... Read More
In the last column we discussed the process of credit... Read More
The Internet has changed the way people do business today.... Read More
Internet now days became a real marketplace and many many... Read More
E-commerce |