Internet Sales Channel Implementation

Many business have been forced to include the electronic sales channel in their commercial structures, since the apparition of Internet. At the same time, other business surged adopting exclusively this channel and later have established physical stores.

This work is mainly aimed to companies thinking about the possibility to establish on line sales channel, from traditional off line commercial structures. First, it is necessary to make clear that the change process is not easy, implying a lot more than creating a web site, covering a complete business strategies modification, the design of new organizational structures, adopting at the end a radically different vision of the company.

Two important questions raise in the business process of making decisions: Which objectives we aim to, and the cost of achieving them. We must therefore evaluate the impact that the decision to enter in ecommerce would have in our organization, considering their impact in core business areas such as Commercial, Financial and Human Resources.

Commercial, Marketing

The company portfolio and some specific product characteristics would be changed, because we target to a new costumer segment (on line) that have not the same needs, feelings, and behave different from the raditional ones.

Probably price and promotion strategies would have to be changed also, according to the channel we use.

New Advertising and Communication strategies have to be adopted specifically to each channel, and these strategies must be coordinated under the global marketing mix objectives of the company.

Financial

Changes, mainly in logistics, will affect fixed and variable cost structures and must be carefully analyzed, recalculating profit margins.

Likely, business ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software must be either adopted or improved, to get absolute real time control of the business transactions, mainly in the client, suppliers, accounting, invoicing, storage, etc. areas, making them running in a safe and smooth way. With on line costumers we can't admit delivery delays, inexistence of stocks once a customer order has been issued...

Human Resources

Consider to hire software, social media and internet marketing specialists. Set up new departments and add them to the firm organization chart.Teach your staff on specific skills about ecommerce and other related topics. Promote a new business culture in the organization.

Other considerations

What strategies do your competitors put in practice? Are they successful? Evaluate in which extent the implementation of the internet sales channel would generate traffic to your traditional stores and vice versa.

Only when all these important aspects would have been carefully considered, we could consistently make the decision to open the internet sales channel successfully.