Bennett Gold LLP Earns Mention In Toronto Life Magazine, April 2005.

E-Commerce Hits & Myths - Predictions that Go Beyond the Crystal Ball

With the passing of every year and the development of each widely embraced technology, many experts scratch their heads and try to predict future business trends. The dawning of the new millennium combined with the rapid growth of e-commerce, however caused every wannabe futurist to throw his or her scratchings onto paper or into cyberspace. Over the years, these Sci-Fi-like predictions often raise unrealistic expectations against which we wrongly measure our own very real business and personal achievements.

Our picture of the next five years is not as flashy or grandiose as the ones you may find elsewhere in the popular business media. We balance an understanding of core business principles, human nature and the possibilities afforded by evolving technologies. At the same time, we recognize that visions of the future can be useful in guiding our actions and goals. However, our approach and considered experience in business and e-commerce allow us to look at these predictions clearly. As a result, we can identify what's likely to be a 'hit' as well as dispel some of the myths that often confuse or frustrate decision-makers. We believe that these insights will serve you well beyond the next few years.

Hit: Time to bring your e-products and e-services to market will continue to shrink dramatically.

Myth: Speed to the e-market is the key determinant to success.

Customer expectations, demands and attention spans have evolved as well as competitors' capabilities. But, while products and services need to be brought to market quickly, being first to market no longer guarantees immediate or long-term success. Profitability in e-commerce still requires conducting careful market, industry and competitor research to ensure successful targeting and branding.

Hit: Legislation will be critical in shaping the rules of e-commerce over the next several years.

Myth: Small business has no role to play in shaping e-commerce legislation.

Governments are bureaucracies that are typically slow to make decisions. This tends to be because of the following reasons: 1) Governments are afraid of not considering all relevant stakeholder viewpoints; 2) Governments are not skilled at gathering and prioritizing information in a way that is either coherent or complete; and 3) Governments want to present a consistent public image that is credible. Armed with the Internet, small businesses can now work together to gather, analyze and position information so that Governments are more willing to address the needs of the new economy.

Hit: Businesses must strive to better understand and serve the needs of the individual customer.

Myth: One-to-one marketing means segmenting your audience down to 'one'.

Internet and e-commerce applications allow each individual to specify their needs to businesses. However, for most businesses, trying to accommodate each customer without understanding segmentation of larger groups means being lost in a pool of discrete and often conflicting customer data. So, while businesses may need to focus on understanding smaller groups of customers, they still need to aggregate information to understand current and upcoming trends.

Hit: The business models underlying today's e-commerce are different from those of the last 10 to 50 years.

Myth: E-commerce businesses have nothing to learn from the industrial revolution.

While human beings are the greatest living adapters, we are reluctant to change. Whatever business function or position you hold or whatever market you operate in, you've seen evidence of people unable or unwilling to change radically or drastically. As a result, our current economy is a hybrid between the industrial age and the information age. This means that people are far more likely to tweak familiar business models than discard them completely. Scratch an e-commerce model, and you'll find industrial business foundations.

Hit: Competition drives the development of e-commerce innovation.

Myth: For your firm to succeed, your competitors must fail.

One of the side effects of the growth of e-commerce is the increasing number of business alliances involving suppliers, clients, and competitors. As businesses evolve quickly to fill demands they will be addressing challenges that can affect entire industries. E-commerce initiatives can be the impetus to bring together traditional competitors to form strong industry partners who together shape the future of their businesses.

Hit: E-commerce security and privacy technologies and procedures are improving rapidly.

Myth: Technology will create a cure-all to address e-customers' security and privacy concerns.

Study after study points to security and privacy as the prevailing issues hindering or halting e-businesses from realizing their profitability potential. This is particularly critical for e-businesses whose investment in e-commerce is not likely to be returned for several years. While advances are continuously being made in the area of Internet security and privacy, there will always be business conditions that threaten customer security and privacy.

The most common, and ironically the most easily addressed, are the procedures that e-businesses can adopt and monitor to ensure the necessary precautions. Businesses that wait for a security and privacy silver bullet run the real risk of losing on-line credibility and being clicked over.

Hit: Businesses need to take full advantage of e-commerce technologies and opportunities to succeed.

Myth: All businesses are equally suited to transforming their bricks and mortar business to online e-commerce business.

Customers, suppliers, business partners and investors alike are looking for opportunities to transform well-known and not-so-well-known businesses to on-line businesses. These changing expectations are founded on the belief that on-line businesses are somehow less expensive and more profitable than their bricks and mortar counterparts.

Lessons from across industries reveal that not all businesses can equally take advantage of the new technologies. Businesses that will succeed will gain leverage off their bricks and mortar presence, which compliments their on-line business capabilities. This will likely mean rethinking what businesses do on - and off-line.

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