10 Reasons Why Companies Should Start Doing Business Online

With the rapid down fall of world economy and dot-com companies in recent years many brick-and-mortar companies and new start-ups ask themselves: To Be Online or Not to Be Online?Not long time ago, I read a comment of a well-known industry observer, where he stated that companies that are not selling through Internet by 2007 will probably become extinct. As dramatic as it might feel, although exaggerated, but there are some truths in it.Consider this: Although diminishing due to bad economy, average growth of e-commerce is around 25 % per year. 81% of small businesses that have an online presence during last year’s holiday season reached new customers, leading to an increase in sales and profitability according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive. Thirty percent of small businesses with a web presence and fewer than 20 employees now generate more than 25% of their revenue online claims Gartner research.If this does not convince you to take your business online, below I pointed out 10 more reasons why you should start doing business online right now.1. New economyInternet has created a new economy, which by its explosive growth and sheer size already changed our perception of traditional way of doing business. Companies like Amazon and eBay have successfully created domination on areas, where just few years ago traditional brick-and-mortar companies were kings. However, in order to be successful on the net, you don’t have to be a giant like them. Many small and mid-size companies managed to build online businesses quite profitably. In fact, studies show small and mid-size companies will be the main growth force of e-commerce in coming years.2. Internet is a perfect venue for businessIn order to make a sale you need visitors to come to your shop. On the Internet, your shop could be only a click away from your prospective customers. With proper marketing your Internet storefront can have more buyers than you ever can get in a brick and mortar shop.3. Company’s imageWhether you sell products or services online or not, in today’s world you have to have a corporate presence on the Internet. Otherwise, as you must have noticed that people simply don’t take your business seriously if you tell them that your company does not have a website. A nice corporate site definitely increases the image of a company especially if it has great product or service related content to go with.4. Provide better customer supportCustomer accusation and retention is one of the key factors of business value chain. Thanks to Internet technology, business can provide customer support more effectively. This means better customer satisfaction and increase of profitability.5. Make information more easily available to customers.Just a couple of years ago, companies used to require days to deliver products or services update information to their customers. Things have changed since then. Today you can add or make any changes to your company and product related content virtually in a matter of couple of hours, publish on your site and share with the whole world.6. Cut costsNew technologies allow you to take virtually any part of your business online, that include supply chain management, billing, shipping, procurement etc. Streamlining these business processes through online systems will allow companies to cut costs significantly in almost every sphere of any business. For example: companies can reduce more than five percents of their maintenance, repair and operation costs by adopting e-business solutions. This five percent savings can turn into 50% of a company’s net profit!7. Ability to do business 24 hoursHow else you can continue making sales, while your stuffs are sleeping! The biggest advantages of online shops are that they are open 24 hours a day year round. Thanks to Internet off time, when your shop is generally closed, sales in some cases can be more than your regular business hours!8. Low start up costsBuilding a web site does not require big investments. There are many low cost tools available today, which can help you create sites from very scratch. Many business portals allow you to build web sites from templates. For less than 100$/month you can have a full-fledged corporate e-business site with all e-commerce features!9 You physical presence could be in any locationThe World Wide Web allows you to do business from any part of the world. Your physical location, except for few cases is not that important since you conduct your business online.10. Go globalThanks to Internet you can instantly become a global player. In fact, you don’t have to invest large sums of money to do this. There are literally hundreds of vertical and horizontal e-marketplaces available on the net. These marketplaces allow you for a nominal fee to get access to a large audience of prospective customers from all over the world. According to AMR Research more than 1,3$ trillion of good and services will flow through the B2B marketplaces. Who does not want a piece of this pie!The right determinant of e-business success is the same like any off line business. You have to have a great idea, you have to have a business plan, there should be a value proposition for prospective clients and you should have belief in it and your ability!Getting online is becoming cheaper and easier thanks to emergence of new technologies but marketing on the Internet is becoming more expensive.Take your business online now, before the marketing costs become way too expensive for small companies.

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Why Telematics Is a Major Disruptor in Insurance?

The vehicle telematics system and User-Based Insurance (UBI) are key trends in the auto insurance industry and expect a disruptive change in the near future.Digital technology is transforming the insurance marketplace enormously and the insurers are investing significant attention to meet the customer expectations by adopting vehicle telematics system. The customer vehicle integrated with the telematics system helps to calculate insurance premiums which is dependent on the distance covered by the vehicle, the speed the driver maintains while driving, and also the overall driving habits of customers as this information can be read and stored by the telematics app and made accessible to not only the insurers but also all stakeholders.Vehicle telematics is recalibrating the auto insurance industry expectations and opening new ways to reach out to the clients. The rise of vehicle telematics not only changing the policyholders’ demands, but also disrupting the way it should be supplied. Many insurers are offering more personalized insurance policies to each and every individual.Telematics as a major disruptorThe digitization process that telematics has brought in recently has made the total insurance industry to stand up and take notice and eventually catch-up with this change. Recent research studies have revealed that vehicle telematics is playing a prominent role to disrupt the auto insurance industry for positive business outcomes. In this way, Big Data is playing a vital role in helping insurers to solve various challenges such as data mining, handling, warehouse data, building data path for user applications and among many others by adopting extensive and varied data structure, which are made easily accessible to vehicle telematics system with the influence of cloud computing. The access control of the vehicle, real-time updates of traffic congestion and weather forecasts and many other vehicle telematics options are remotely accessed with the help of cloud computing, for both customers and insurers. The big data and cloud computing technologies are the mainstream of vehicle telematics system and hence are attracting new customers towards insurance policies by providing convenience and comfort in service.Over the years, the auto insurance companies have successfully reduced the gap between insurers and customers. The vehicle telematics-enabled usage-based insurance is gaining momentum to meet the customer satisfaction with a flexible pricing model over the traditional pricing model and as a result policyholders can pay the insurance rates based on their driving behavior. It is an ultimate transformation that is giving customers complete control over their insurance premiums. To help policyholders for their driving risks, User-Based Insurance (UBI) model encourages individuals to drive safe and lower the risk of accidents happening through live feedback even as they can save money by improving their driving skills.In the US, Insurance companies are implementing different approaches in User-Based Insurance model and the simplest, auto insurance policies are trending in the auto insurance market, such as Pay As You Drive (PAYD) is one among them. Rather than paying a fixed annual premium charge, PAYD ensures premiums are calculated based on the number of miles/kilometers driven by the policyholder with the help of vehicle telematics system.United States is considering the UBI model as their grid. The spate of recent successes has confirmed immense response of policyholders towards this new approach. Even in many European countries, insurers moved to the next level of Pay-How-You-Drive (PHYD) right after the huge success of Pay-As-You-Drive (PAYD) model.The Pay How You Drive (PHYD) monitors the driver behavior and driving style, the premium charges are reduced accordingly with improvements in driver behavior.The UBI has a great potential gateway to digitally enhance customers, as a result, PHYD has created a remarkable platform for auto insurance policies, but a number of insurers have started looking beyond the Pay How You Drive (PHYD)model for better user experience, as a development Manage How You Drive (MHYD) considered as the next move of UBI. Manage How You Drive (MHYD) offers a discount to safe drivers and also intimates the policyholders about driving performance through monthly feedback depending on their driving score.Vehicle telematics benefits:• Experienced drivers often pay unreasonably high premium charges which can be reduced easily.
• Encourages policyholders to drive safely and reduce the risk of accidents.
• If the policyholder drives very often then he/she will get fewer premium charges.
• Continuous monitoring of the driver helps to improve the driving behavior.
• It’s very easy to track vehicle health and fuel consumption of the vehicle.The vehicle telematics system and User-Based Insurance system is imparting a major disruptive change in the auto insurance industry with innovative insurance policy models for customer convenience. However, insurers are implementing different strategies to improve the marketing and sales process of UBI model to maintain the balance in insurance policies, perhaps the priority is also given to the risk management and price calculation from the customers’ stand point. The disruptive vehicle telematics system can trigger the process of auto insurance policies and can be sustained without any major change in the insurance company structure, business model, and strategy. The vehicle telematics system is known for its conservative posture and disruption is never really easy for such systems, especially in the auto insurance industry. But the year 2016 can be a year of continuing transformation of vehicle telematics system, in which the insurance companies who remain as innovators will be those who are willing to engage in significant rethinking.

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