Modern problems of science and education. What is e-commerce? Consider the benefits of e-commerce

E-commerce is an organization commercial activities through Internet technologies and using the Internet.

Electronic business is built on three main technologies: the ability for a supplier to post information about their goods or services on the Internet and accept orders for them electronically; the ability for the buyer to access electronic catalogs of supplying companies and order goods or services online; electronic payment system. It should be noted that the electronic payment system, being an integral part e-commerce, has already turned into a separate electronic business itself.

Special mention should be made of electronic business, which takes place entirely online, in which the interaction between supplier and buyer is limited only to the Internet. Such e-commerce allows minimizing the company's costs, thereby increasing its profitability. These types of e-commerce include stores selling a variety of software, audio and video materials, providing a variety of services on the Internet, Internet exchanges, Internet bulletin boards, etc. By the way, despite the fact that the concepts of e-commerce and e-business are mentioned today almost as synonyms, experts insist on the difference between e-business and e-commerce in that in the case of e-business, all business processes take place on the network, while e-commerce is just transferring the sales system to the Internet.

Depending on which structure is the supplier and which is the buyer, e-business has several directions:

B2C (business to client),

B2B (business to business),

B2G (business to government),

C2C (client to client),

G2B (government to business).

E-commerce today has a short, but very eventful history. The prerequisite for the emergence of e-commerce was the transition of the United States from the industrial to the post-industrial stage of economic development, when the main product in the economy becomes not a product, but a service, and the product itself is no longer considered separately from the organization of its sale and service. At the same time, the vast majority of fundamental changes in electronic business have undergone in the last twenty years, although the beginning of electronic commerce was laid back in 1960. It was then that the American companies American Airlines and IBM began to develop an electronic air ticket reservation system that allowed American Airlines to quickly manage profitability by changing ticket prices based on the availability of seats.

The next stage was the management of enterprise inventories using electronic technologies. Actively developing mass production set entrepreneurs the task of planning demand and, accordingly, inventories in order, on the one hand, to ensure sufficient stocks for uninterrupted trade, and on the other, not to freeze working capital in the form of excess inventories.

The use of electronic technologies to solve these problems made it possible to significantly reduce costs. And at the end of the 60s, computer technology began to be used for comprehensive planning of enterprise activities - procurement, production, sales, personnel management - everything was considered as a single system in order to minimize costs at each stage.

Electronic business took the next step in its development with the advent of electronic bank cards. At the end of the 60s, the number of owners of plastic cards grew sharply due to their mailing, and after this the number of retail outlets working with cards rapidly increased, and banks were forced to join the main payment systems. In 1976, the concept of an electronic signature appeared, without which modern electronic commerce is simply unthinkable. In 1977, more than two hundred banks in America and Europe were united by an interbank financial communications network. And in the early 80s, the first electronic payment systems appeared. Then they were carried out using a special software exclusively in closed computer networks.

In the late 80s, e-commerce was actively introduced into the tourism industry, when several million travel agencies and numerous airlines, as well as hotels and car rental companies, were connected via a computer network. This made it possible to sell complex tourism products in one place, remote from the location of the service provider and increase the overall demand for tourism services.

In 1989, the fundamental standard of the modern Internet space was developed - the World Wide Web (WWW) standard - a global hypertext system. The HTTP protocol created on its basis has become the main transport protocol of the Internet. In the same year, the predecessor of the dealing center opened - electronic business appeared on the securities exchange.

Up to 1990 commercial use The Internet was prohibited, as a result of which e-commerce could not develop to its full potential. However, in 1990, the first large private corporations were allowed to operate on the Internet, and management of the Internet itself, which until then was under the full control of American government agencies, was transferred to private structures. Already in 1992, the commercialization of the Internet received approval from the US Congress, and from that moment on, e-commerce entered a new phase of its development. In 1993, technologies for the future were invented electronic money, and in 1994 the first electronic payment system appeared on the Internet.

In 1995, the Amazon online store website opened, which is today the largest online store in the world. At the same time, the first Internet bank began operating. It should be noted that the first online stores, in fact, conducted electronic business using the long-established technology of trading by telephone and mail, which at that time was widespread in the United States. In 2003, the global music store iTunes began operating.

In Russia, e-commerce has been actively developing since about 1998. In 1999, the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange began accepting electronic orders for the purchase and sale of currency using an open, powerful Internet gateway, and electronic business in Russia was supplemented with an Internet trading system. Today, electronic business includes numerous online stores, electronic payment systems, online exchanges, online auctions and others.

Today, e-commerce provides the greatest opportunities for both suppliers and customers. Among these features:

Self-registration of the buyer on the supplier’s website. This creates additional convenience in service for customers, and allows suppliers to carry out targeted advertising of their goods and services and marketing research in the sales process.

Place orders online using electronic catalogs and price lists. This feature provides significant time savings on searching for the required product or service and comparing prices from different suppliers.

Electronic order processing, including checking the availability of goods in stock, calculating possible delivery times. This feature is an integral functional part of the enterprise’s logistics system.

Accept payment for purchases via the Internet. Payment can be made using bank cards through secure payment terminals, as well as using local or international Internet payment systems.

In some cases, the delivery or provision of a service is also carried out online.

Consultations on the use of purchased goods, round-the-clock technical support services operating in the form of chats.

E-commerce has every opportunity for further development. Firstly, saving on the costs of online stores allows them to reduce prices, and buying in online stores today is sometimes much more profitable than in regular stores. This fact ensures both a constant influx of buyers and the emergence of new players in the market. E-business is becoming more competitive, which in turn has a positive effect on the quality of services provided and goods offered.

Modern e-commerce is based on usage personal computer, however, if today's use in this area mobile phones Since the use of computers is not as widespread as the use of computers, analysts predict that in the near future e-business may be reoriented to the use of cell phones. This is due to the fact that, on the one hand, cell phone is an absolutely mobile and easily manageable device, and on the other hand, modern technologies cellular communications are capable of providing technical base for the full integration of phones into electronic business. In addition, cellular devices already have a user identification system, and any owner has an account opened by a cellular operator, which can be used for payments.

Regardless of how the tech platform becomes the core of e-commerce in the future, it is clear that it will eventually dominate the business.

PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS FOR E-COMMERCE DEVELOPMENT

In the context of the formation of a new economy, the role of information technologies (IT) and the Internet, which are key driving forces innovation, economic growth and social change are becoming increasingly important. Their development and widespread use in the last decades of the 20th century. made it possible to radically change the centuries-old technologies for conducting commercial transactions through the widespread use of electronic data exchange during these operations instead of traditional paper document flow, which marked the beginning of the rapid development of such a phenomenon as electronic commerce. Until now, in the economic literature there is no consensus on the content of the category “electronic commerce”.

There is no universal definition of this term, because e-commerce as an economic category is still at the stage of collecting facts and understanding them.

According to the terminology used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), e-commerce in the "narrow" sense is the sale or purchase of goods and services carried out using the Internet, together with goods and services ordered over the Internet, as well as payment and final delivery goods either on-line or off-line (outside the network).

Electronic commerce in the “broad” sense includes transactions carried out through computer networks such as the Internet, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), Minitel and interactive telephone systems. From the point of view of the Russian scientist-economist O.A. Kobelev, e-commerce should be understood as entrepreneurial activity involving the implementation of commercial transactions using electronic means of data exchange. E-commerce is based on new information technologies for carrying out commercial transactions and managing production processes using electronic means of data exchange. According to the author of the article, the most complete definition is given to the term by A.V. Yurasov: “Electronic commerce is a sector of the economy that includes all financial and trade transactions carried out using computer networks, and business processes associated with such transactions.”

Electronic commerce includes electronic information exchange, electronic capital movement, electronic commerce, electronic money, electronic marketing, electronic banking and electronic insurance services. Let us pay attention to the historical aspects of the development of the concept of e-commerce.

The first attempts to comprehensively implement the concept of e-commerce began to be made almost immediately after the advent of computers in the 1950-1960s.

In 1960, programmers of the largest American airline American Airlines and the manufacturer and supplier of hardware and software, the transnational corporation IBM, created a system for automating the procedure for reserving seats on flights SABRE (Semi-Automatic Business Research Environment), which made air travel more accessible to ordinary citizens.

By automating the process of calculating tariffs when reserving seats, the cost of services was reduced.

By 1965, the SABER system deployed at the Briarcliff Manor data center was fully interactive, with a backup error rate of less than 1%. It united more than 30 thousand transport agencies, 3 million registered customers, more than 400 airlines, 50 car rental companies, 35 thousand hotels, numerous travel agencies, several dozen railway companies, ferry owners and cruise organizers. In the mid-70s. for the first time began to use tools for electronic data interchange (EDI - Electronic Data Interchange) and electronic fund transfer (EFT - Electronic Funds Transfer). The disadvantage of the first systems was their high cost and non-standard software and hardware components. Only a few banks and large enterprises could afford the significant initial costs of purchasing equipment and operating private networks.

In addition, in the 1970s. similar processes began in European countries - the search for standard solutions for data exchange, which resulted in the emergence of a new system international standards GTDI (General-purpose Trade Data Interchange Standards), focused on trading processes. Thus, a situation has arisen of the coexistence of two systems of standards - European and American, the movement to unify which has continued for several decades. In the 1990s, marked by the rapid growth of the Internet as a result of the advent of Web technologies, a new type of business emerged - retail via the Internet.

In 1997, another standard appeared - OBI (Open Buying on the Internet), which covers a much larger range of issues of standardization of all forms of interaction between organizations involved in the full purchase-sale-delivery cycle, the main idea of which is an orientation towards open systems.

Finally, in 2003, the AS-2 format was developed, combining EDI and the Internet. It allows you to exchange digital data via the http protocol, which is usually used for browsing web pages.

It is worth noting that despite the fact that the majority of economists, scientists and analysts predict rapid growth With the growth of e-commerce worldwide in the coming decades, some analysts are questioning the very importance of online transactions in general. So Enrico Santarelli, professor at the University of Bologna, believes that “despite rapid growth e-commerce in the second half of the 1990s, which created the impression that e-commerce was the biggest change since the industrial revolution two centuries earlier, this type of sales still represents a very small proportion of all transactions, in fact electronic transactions as in retail sales(B2C) and wholesale trade (B2B) are in their infant phase.

The electronic market is still quite weak in comparison with traditional markets; the potential of e-commerce has not been fully realized for a number of reasons:

1) absence or insufficient development of normative and legislative framework, which raises the problem of protecting intellectual property rights for goods sold through e-commerce, as well as contractual and financial problems. The consequence of all this is distrust on the part of investors, potential buyers, and a slowdown in the pace of development;
2) the presence of problems associated with the global concept of e-commerce, including uncertainty about the real existence of a partner company in another part of the world and the product or service it offers, differences in traditions and rules of doing business among these companies;
3) the presence of security threats in electronic commerce, which can be minimized if effective and reliable mechanisms are in place to guarantee confidentiality, identification and authorization;
4) the need for universal standards of interaction and network compatibility so that, for example, all e-commerce participants have the opportunity to access company websites regardless of their geographic location or the characteristics of the networks with which they are connected;
5) the difficulty of involving new participants, associated with the lack of experienced sales managers, logisticians, marketers, and qualified service specialists, as a result of which attention is paid directly to the Internet (project design), and not to real trade as such, and the business loses potential buyers.

Nevertheless, we can talk about the seriousness and significance of the e-commerce market in our country by comparing Russian data with data from European countries.

The penetration of e-commerce in Russia is already approximately at the same level as many EU members (from its southern and eastern parts) - Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic countries. True, the gap from France, Germany, Great Britain, and Scandinavia is quite significant, 3-4 times, which shows great potential for growth of the Russian market (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. - The ratio of the share of online buyers in different countries(groups of countries) in 2009:

In addition, the Russian payment card market maintains positive development dynamics, both in the field of issuing and acquiring payment cards (Fig. 2).

However, the growth in the number of issued cards slowed down in 2009, which is explained by the initial saturation of the market, especially in metropolitan cities. Also, in terms of the number of payment cards per person (less than one card per person), Russia still lags behind the leaders - the USA and Great Britain, where there are 5.3 and 2.4 cards per resident, respectively. According to Data Insight (a research agency specializing in the e-commerce market), the volume of retail e-commerce in Russia in 2011 will be about 310 billion rubles (an increase over the year of approximately 30%).

Rice. 2. - Number of payment cards issued in the Russian Federation:

In Moscow alone, the number of online buyers is growing by 20-25% per year, and in the regions - by 40% per year. Among the macro-regions, the South is growing the fastest - growth in the audience of online stores by 80%, growth in the number of e-commerce requests - by 75%; in second place Far East, in third place is the Urals. Among individual regions, the leaders in terms of growth rates are the Krasnodar, Stavropol and Khabarovsk territories (growth of 90-120% per year).

The main trends of 2011 in Russia related to e-commerce:

- an increase in the number of retailers seriously investing in online;
- influx of large investments in e-commerce;
- expanding the geography of delivery to the regions;
- growth in the number of online purchases abroad.

However, 2011 showed that Russian market e-commerce is still far from being saturated. In 2012, it is planned to increase the number of online buyers by 25%, and increase the volume of online sales by 22% to 380 billion rubles. Thus, the share of e-commerce in the Russian economy will increase over time, and, therefore, its positive impact on the state economy and the standard of living of society will increase, and new profitable opportunities will appear:

- global presence and global choice;
- personalization of sales;
- quick response to demand;
- cost reduction; commerce entrepreneurial trade
- new business opportunities;
- further development of the competitive environment.

According to Russian scientists, three main factors of economic growth in the Internet economy and e-commerce can be identified:

1) positive side effect networks, which is a motivating factor on the Internet, where consumers and businesses find more and more benefits from using the Internet and involve each other in e-commerce processes;
2) complementary relationships between the components of Internet technologies, expressed in the fact that the value of using some IT components necessarily increases the value of others (for example, the growth of broadband Internet and the spread of broadband technologies forces application manufacturers to develop powerful multimedia applications for them);
3) low transaction costs (implementation of internal and external relations of the company and the exchange and management of knowledge within it affect growth economic efficiency).

Sources

1. Kobelev O.A. E-commerce: Tutorial/ ed. prof. S.V. Pirogov. - 2nd ed., revised. and additional - M.: Publishing and trading corporation "Dashkov and Co", 2006. - P. 14.
2. L. Goff (Lesley Goff) “Sabre is taking off” // Computerworld Russia No. 43 1999 M. Publishing house. "Open systems".
3. The essence of EDI is to create standardized documents and present them in a form convenient for further automated processing.
4. Electronic commerce: textbook. allowance / under general ed. L.A. Bragina. - M.: Economist, 2005. - P. 29.
5. E. Santarelli. The nature of e-commerce: Do transaction costs matter? Russian magazine Management No. 3, 2004. - P. 36.
6. Yurasov A.V. “Basics of e-commerce”, Hotline-Telecom, Moscow, 2007.
7. C.L. Mann, Sue E. Eckert, S.C. Knight. Global Electronic Commerce. A Policy Primer. - Institute for international economics. 2000.

Currently, a number of factors have emerged in Russia that have a decisive influence on the development of e-commerce:

? geographical factor (territory requiring economic integration at the federal level and reducing the impact of restrictions associated with the remoteness of Russian market entities on their economic activity);
? the need to increase the degree of integration of Russia into global information and economic processes;
? the need to reduce total trade costs in the interests of increasing the competitiveness of Russian products on the world market, increasing the controllability of economic processes in general and trade in particular, improving control and achieving the necessary degree of control over trade operations by fiscal authorities in the interests of increasing the state budget;
? traditionally established and constantly maintained high level of education in higher school Russia;
? dynamic development of the necessary technical and technological base, including the widespread introduction into practice of computers and modern means informatization, a certain level of development of telecommunications, information networks and access to the global information space;
? the presence of certain developments in banking technologies aimed at remote maintenance interbank and client transactions;
? availability of technical solutions and means of ensuring cryptographic information protection and information security participants in trade relations (manufacturers, product suppliers, buyers, banks, insurance companies, etc.).

At the same time, at present, the commodity markets of the Russian Federation are characterized by a low level of culture of market relations, imperfect legal and regulatory support, insufficient development of the information structure of commodity markets, a high degree of monopolization of the economy, and imperfection of the system of financial and credit relations.

In the process of commodity distribution there is a multi-link system. The share of sales of goods through the intermediary of wholesale trade organizations in the total volume of products shipped by manufacturers is over 25%. At the same time, there is an uneven distribution of intermediary organizations on the territory of Russia.

Among the large number of companies specializing in the production and dissemination of information, not one organizational structure does not have reliable and complete information that comprehensively characterizes actual condition commodity markets. Market participants do not have access to high-quality and complete information about commodity markets. All this makes the distribution of goods very difficult. The introduction of e-commerce will significantly reduce the negative impact of many factors and will contribute to the development of both domestic commodity markets and foreign trade relations.

To successfully integrate into the world economy, Russia is forced to take into account general trends in the development of trade, including in the field of electronic commerce.

Currently, e-commerce in Russia is not developing at such a rapid pace, and our country has a very small presence in the e-commerce market. According to the website www.magazin.ru, in 2001 there were only 362 online stores in Russia, and 85% of them did not support on-line payments. The “sick” economy, the instability of the national banking system, and the underdevelopment of the system are to blame for this, first of all. credit cards, lack of awareness of potential clients of e-commerce systems. At the same time, the territorial and geographical features of Russia and the difficulties that arise when organizing trade between regions make the e-commerce system potentially quite effective. However, extraordinary steps and actions are needed by the Russian government and executive branch subjects of the Russian Federation, which would ensure the targeted development of e-commerce and the competitiveness of Russian companies in the global market.

Since the basis of entrepreneurship is the efficiency of performing all stages of management, trading and production operations, the need to use e-commerce methods and technologies for entrepreneurship is a very natural phenomenon.

The development of e-commerce in Russia is currently negatively affected by a number of factors:

? insufficient development of financial infrastructure to support transactions;
? the unresolved nature of many legal issues regarding the use of e-commerce technologies;
? the presence of significant potential reserves for increasing business efficiency that lie outside the sphere of e-commerce (low level of enterprise automation, labor productivity, transaction discipline, etc.);
? low compared to developed countries, percentage of business entities with access to the Internet.

Today, the Internet in Russia is used on a regular basis by approximately 10% of the population, i.e. about 12-14 million people. This is a consequence not only of underdeveloped infrastructure, but also of the high cost of connection.

Thus, the average cost of a permanent Internet connection in Russia is approximately 20-30 dollars per month, and the same service in the USA costs 10 dollars, in the UK - 30 pounds.

Taking into account low level income of the population, such a price is practically prohibitive and makes the use of these technologies inaccessible for the average user.

The pace of development of information technology completely depends on the state of the economy. The higher the requirements for the economic efficiency of production, the more transparent the relations between business entities, the tougher the competition in the market, the faster information technologies develop. Today, the United States is the leader in the information and communication technology market (occupies 36% of this market) and Europe - also 36%. Additionally, Japan holds 11% of the market, the Asian Tigers 3% and the rest of the world 14%. In Europe, Germany occupies 23% of the market, Great Britain - 21%, France - 18%, Italy - 8%, Spain - 4%. Eastern Europe accounts for only 6% of the market, and Russia only has a small share of this 6%.

Nevertheless, the trend is positive: if, according to analysts, during 2000 the volume of electronic transactions in Russia amounted to about $150 million, then by 2005 it amounted to $1 billion. Undoubtedly, such growth is a consequence of the continuous increase in supply and demand in the Russian information technology sector. This sector has demonstrated its high internal potential as it has grown without any government involvement. The Russian information technology industry has become a significant market factor over the past five years. In 1995-2000 it was one of the most dynamically developing industries: growth rates of 15 to 25% per year. In 2001 alone, the number of B2B projects in Russia doubled and exceeded one hundred.

The priority of business informatization issues in the trading industry has increased significantly in recent years. Traditionally, the strong positions of domestic software suppliers in this segment are tested by foreign competitors. Many (though by no means all) leaders of global retail have already appeared on the Russian market.

Retail trade turnover in Russia in February 2004 amounted to 392.3 billion rubles. For comparison, this is only 3.4 times less than for the entire 2002. Shopping centers in large cities they are growing at the highest rates. The largest market is expected to appear on the Russian market. retail network Wal-Mart. This means that the leading players will have another serious competitor. Wal-Mart does not want to repeat the mistakes of IKEA and is “working” very closely with the Moscow government in order to successfully begin work at the right time. The efforts of the Americans are not in vain: administrative barriers are one of the main buffers on the way of foreign trade networks in our country.

Retail chains in Russia, especially in large cities, are gradually replacing markets and single stores. Supermarkets reduced prices to the market average after the 1998 crisis, and at the same time discounters appeared, keeping prices at an even lower level through savings. But the most fashionable formats recently have become hypermarkets and cash & carry. Huge warehouse stores are ready to serve tens of thousands of customers a day, while the format, assortment and price level cannot be compared with those that became common in the 90s. wholesale markets. Now many families in large cities make their monthly purchases in stores of this kind.

Reasons for choosing an automation system in trade

According to a survey by RosBusinessConsulting (2002), first of all, the network format in retail trade implies working under a single brand, unifying the assortment and rules for organizing trade. In addition, a successful retail network cannot have problems with merchandising, logistics, accounting and management.

A rapidly developing market, the rules of which are formed by more mature and experienced foreigners, is becoming extremely competitive in all segments, even not in the most prosperous regions. All major players have gradually and equally successfully learned to attract and use the main competitive advantages: administrative and financial resources.

Russian companies are bringing their own corporate culture up to the level of foreign ones; tasks that only yesterday seemed deeply secondary are coming to the fore: store efficiency, theft, staff motivation, working with suppliers. The management of the chains is seriously concerned not only with maintaining the pace of opening new stores, but also with issues of economy and efficiency.

The consultants have one diagnosis: optimization of business processes with subsequent automation as a strategic direction of development, and not due to necessity and availability of money. Fortunately, global experience provides the broadest opportunities in this area.

Reasons for choosing a system integrator in trade

The desire to use reliable information technologies in trade has already become a good tradition in the world. Back in the 70s. Wal-Mart manager Sam Olsen fell in love with automation after meeting IBM managers. And already in the 80s. and other large retailers realized that without information technology their business would be uncompetitive.

It is no coincidence that today the Wal-Mart computer center is comparable in productivity to the largest computer centers in the world, and the database is not inferior in volume to that of the FBI or the Pentagon. In terms of 2004 IT spending, trade is second only to two industries in the United States.

The world leader in the field of trade automation technologies is IBM; other developers of automation systems also do not ignore this segment. Large retailers put the refinement of business processes at the forefront of their development strategy, the automation of which makes it possible to optimize everything.

Retail giants are developing according to latest achievements development companies, all of them have already switched from MRP class systems to ERP.

The first priority of any network merchant is to avoid sudden movements, loss of efficiency and controllability of business processes. Therefore, the transition to a more progressive system took time, but ultimately took place. Although retailers can formally be content with MRP, they do not have such strict requirements for the continuity of information flows; the organization of the ERP principle is more advanced. More developed analytical capabilities fit organically into the strategy of the global trade market: to always be on the wave of global automation achievements.

It is no coincidence that retailers are infatuated with the promising technology of RFIK brands. Transmitter stamps, the cost of which has already dropped to a couple of tens of cents, are capable of informing corporate system remotely about whether a product is leaving the store, whether the shelf life is approaching, or about any other event. It is obvious that this technology, while still quite expensive, can bring inventory accounting, merchandising, the fight against theft, and even the shopping process itself to perfection, you just have to set this goal and rely on promising technology. True, there is a danger that enterprising scammers will find an easy way to jam RFIK marks...

What do retail chains want to get from automation?

Decades of Western retailers' head start has led to the fact that many of them are able to keep several times fewer staff in their stores.

For example, in a regular Wal-Mart, all the staff is located in the hall; the store does not have a warehouse, accounting department, or numerous support staff. This company has turned its enormous scale to its advantage, because automation becomes more justified and understandable as the number of stores increases. If in the world the concept of “network” begins with 100 stores, then we still have 2-3 stores - a network. In Russia, so far only a few chains have more than 100 stores under their control. The largest of them, Eldorado, now has about 500 stores. Retail chains that manage 10 stores need modern automation a little less than large chains. At the same time, it is disproportionately more difficult for “small retailers” to understand this - a small scale does not pose insoluble problems in management, and it is difficult even for a professional to evaluate the effectiveness “by eye”, much less make a correct diagnosis.

Peculiarities of mentality also play an important role, even for Western networks. Thus, the startup team of the French chain Auchan, which opens the first store in a new country, puts the business on stream, recruits a team of local managers and goes to new market, reached Russia a few years ago. And she stayed here. It is no secret that French managers really liked the rules of doing Russian business in its most unsightly manifestations, which they were not slow to accept. The result is a kind of hybrid company, combining well-honed business processes and not the most modern, but serious IBM automation system, with numerous low-skilled, cheap personnel and “enterprising” managers. Other Western players, such as Metro and Marktkauf, adapted to Russian realities to a much lesser extent, as could be expected from companies of German origin, but they could not completely avoid country specificities.

Russian players feel the strength of their Western competitors and are trying to respond to the challenge or, conversely, build a layered defense. As a result, conservatives suffer more, but revolutionaries also suffer. Russian players do not have enough time to progress through the evolutionary path to formalizing business processes and automation. As a result, who goes too far with the staff, instead corporate culture introducing the “red brigade” culture, who implements great system automation, but more suitable for an oil and gas holding or a metallurgical plant than for a trading enterprise. But there is still a place in the market, the welfare of the people is growing, mistakes for retailers are not yet fatal and do not greatly hinder them from moving forward. The situation may change in 4-5 years, when Wal-Mart and other Western companies gain momentum.

It is believed that the automation market trading enterprises arose simultaneously with the transition of department stores and supermarkets into private hands. As is often the case in emerging markets, customers initially preferred to control automation processes and outsource them to their own IT departments. This was explained by the fact that the functionality of mass-produced products of those years was not very different from our own developments, and it was more important to control and optimize a home-grown system than to be content with a more stable, but mass-produced analogue.

Subsequently, with the development of the retail market, the transformation of single stores into chains, and the increase in information flows, home-grown systems could no longer cope with more complex tasks automation. From this point of view, more mature and tested on other projects circulation solutions made it possible to more successfully solve problems associated with scaling tasks.

The development of the trade automation market can begin in 1994; it was then that the main market trend for the next 5 years was determined - the joint creation of products by IT services and system integrators, and the main task fell on the shoulders of the latter - to develop a finished product.

The Seventh Continent network was the first to be automated, installing the SWS product flow accounting system of the F10 company. This system was supplied to the first supermarket, and then to all subsequent ones. The next retail chain, Perekrestok, which appeared on the Moscow market in 1995, installed R2000 manufactured by Rep-Co (now BMS).

In 1997, “Paterson” initially installed the product of the IBS company - IBS Trade House, but soon the automation of all supermarkets was carried out by “Astor VC” based on the industry solution “Astor: Trading House”, created on the “1C: Enterprise” platform.

The Turkish Ramstore, which opened its first hypermarket also in 1997, installed the kBASE system produced by the Turkish company of the same name.

The installation of this system was due to the fact that the same solution is used in the Turkish Migros network, therefore, for the uniformity of reports and general schemes conducting business, the Turkish management of the chain decided to install one system in all chains and stores.

“Ramstore”, by virtue of its foreign origin, created a precedent for changing priorities by being the first to order a completely ready-made foreign automation system.

The 1998 crisis led to radical changes in the principles of online trading in Russia and taught a very harsh lesson, indicating the importance of organizing and managing business processes. And this is exactly what foreign systems handled better, due to their disproportionately greater experience in business consulting.

Therefore, new discounter chains that appeared immediately after the crisis changed the approach to automation. Thus, the Kopeyka retail chain immediately chose the Western development of the French company FIT, the GESTkRI software product (today, the Kopeika retail chain has partially switched to the SAP R3 system). This development soon became one of the most popular in Russia, which was due to its relative cheapness and adaptability to Russian conditions. Domestic products also turned out to be in demand due to their good functionality-price ratio. Gradually, chains began to put forward increasingly stringent requirements for product quality.

A number of online merchants continued to rely on “custom-written” systems, partly out of habit. Often, retail chains were founded by wholesale companies that already had their own software systems written in the early 90s, which could be changed by various reasons, the owners refused.

Before 1999, the IT trade market was only a few million dollars. This slow development is largely due to the fact that stereotypes of ineffectiveness of complex automation prevailed in trade longer than other industries. The managers of these companies did not want to hear about anything other than the classic gentleman's set: an accounting program, a personnel management program and a cash register program (if there were RKB terminals on the network). This situation remained normal as long as the markups were huge and the scale of the networks was small, i.e., the result of automation was not so noticeable for the business. The 1998 crisis marked the beginning of a reduction in markups and savings; as networks scaled up, it became increasingly difficult to work “the old fashioned way” and new opportunities to save with the help of IT appeared. The market took on real features and began to develop rapidly.

The automation market in trade is developing even faster than the rapid pace of development of the trade market, but with some delay relative to other vertical IT markets. In 2004, the IT market in trade amounted to only $280 million, which is 4 times less than the IT market in the oil and gas industry and 3 times less than IT costs in government agencies. As already mentioned, in Europe and the USA, the IT trade market invariably ranks among the top three. But the growth rate of the domestic IT trade market in 2004 relative to 2003 exceeded 50%, which is approximately 2 times higher than the average market rate. According to RosBusinessConsulting analysts, such growth rates will continue until 2007. This is despite the fact that the growth rate of retail trade volumes is gradually decreasing (from 33% in 2000 to 19% in 2003).

In Russia, by 2002, several software products had been created that were most widespread. These are “Supermag 2000” of the “Service Plus” company, IBS Trade and IBS Trade House of the IBS company, “Trading House” and “Trading Network” of the “Astor VC” company, “Domino” of the “Soft-West” company, Solution for the distribution center “ Kistribution Center Solution for Axapta” from Columbus IT Partner Russia. As already mentioned, the French GESTkRI held the most confident position among foreign systems. Since the end of 2001, ERP systems of the SAP R3 RETAIL and Navision AXAPTA class began to be implemented in Russian trade. Introduction of full-fledged ERP systems or their fragments became an indicator that Russian trade began to move to a fundamentally new level informatization.

At the same time, already in 2004 it became clear that the field for automation of Russian trading enterprises was almost limitless.

If several Moscow networks are limited to the development of already implemented systems, then many of their neighbors have already outgrown their systems and are forced to switch to more powerful analogues. If we talk about regional companies, among which relatively large players also appear, then automation there can be started from scratch, having first destroyed the remnants of the ancient self-written system.

It is expected that the growing popularity of Western ERP-class systems can significantly increase the automation market, since their implementation is an order of magnitude more expensive than the implementation of domestic systems.

Another factor that will influence the automation market will be the arrival of foreign retail chains. Foreign companies opening their stores in Russia have traditional standards and habits in the field of automation, and Russian integrators most often cannot fully service these companies in this case, no matter how hard they try.

Although there are exceptions to this rule. It all depends on how exactly Western companies enter our market. If expansion is carried out independently, then indeed, the likelihood that they will use their systems is quite high (Metro, IKEA).

But even in this case, there are examples of how large transnational companies successfully implemented systems to manage the bulk of Russian business domestically developed(Volkswagen-Audi concern). If a Western company enters the Russian market through the sale of its franchise to a company operating in Russia, then when choosing an automation system, domestic and foreign solutions often treated as equals and choice Russian systems quite possible (the Spar retail chain followed this path).

It should be noted that Western companies have extensive experience of successfully operating within the framework of fierce competition and have long learned to save their money and make rational decisions without falling under the influence of the “authority of the brand.”

In addition, no matter what, any foreign company will be forced to buy cash register solutions and the equipment itself in Russia. In addition, Russian companies can count on servicing systems installed by Western companies.

Thus, there are very serious prerequisites for dynamic growth in the market. At the same time, some analysts (for example, from RosBusinessConsulting) fear that this may be growth for a select few; the emergence of new players and systems in this very conservative market is fraught with significant difficulties. Even efforts by companies that are well established in other vertical industries may fail.

Distribution of IT budgets by industry:

Industry: % of turnover per employee:

mechanical engineering - 0.8391; metallurgy - 0.64153; retail trade 0.95352; telecommunications 3.51995; production of consumer goods 1.0347;

TEK 1.6940; transport 1.1546; finance/insurance 3.871760.

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PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS FOR E-COMMERCE DEVELOPMENT

Prepared by:

Tutaeva Yulia Rafailovna

As the new economy emerges, the role of information technology (IT) and the Internet as key drivers of innovation, economic growth and social change is becoming increasingly important. Their development and widespread use in the last decades of the 20th century. made it possible to radically change the centuries-old technologies for conducting commercial transactions through the widespread use of electronic data exchange during these operations instead of traditional paper document flow, which marked the beginning of the rapid development of such a phenomenon as electronic commerce. Until now, in the economic literature there is no consensus on the content of the category “electronic commerce”.

There is no universal definition of this term, because e-commerce as an economic category is still at the stage of collecting facts and understanding them.

E-commerce includes electronic information exchange, electronic capital flow, electronic commerce, electronic money, electronic marketing, electronic banking and electronic insurance services. Let us pay attention to the historical aspects of the development of the concept of e-commerce.

The first attempts to comprehensively implement the concept of e-commerce began to be made almost immediately after the advent of computers in the 1950-1960s.

By automating the process of calculating tariffs when reserving seats, the cost of services was reduced.

In addition, in the 1970s. Similar processes began in European countries - the search for standard solutions for data exchange, which resulted in the emergence of a new system of international standards GTDI (General-purpose Trade Data Interchange Standards), focused on trade processes. Thus, a situation has arisen of the coexistence of two systems of standards - European and American, the movement to unify which has continued for several decades. In the 1990s, marked by the rapid growth of the Internet as a result of the advent of Web technologies, a new type of business emerged - Internet retailing.

Finally, in 2003, the AS-2 format was developed, combining EDI and the Internet. It allows you to exchange digital data via the http protocol, which is usually used for browsing web pages.

It is worth noting that while the bulk of economists, academics and analysts predict rapid growth in the coming decades of e-commerce worldwide, some analysts question the very importance of online transactions in general. Thus, Enrico Santarelli, a professor at the University of Bologna, believes that “despite the rapid growth of e-commerce in the second half of the 1990s, which created the impression that e-commerce was the biggest change since the industrial revolution that occurred two centuries earlier , this type of sales still represents a very small share of all transactions, in fact, electronic transactions in both retail (B2C) and wholesale (B2B) are in their infant phase.

The electronic market is still quite weak in comparison with traditional markets; the potential of e-commerce has not been fully realized for a number of reasons:

1) the absence or insufficient development of the regulatory and legislative framework, which gives rise to the problem of protecting intellectual property rights for goods sold through e-commerce, as well as contractual and financial problems. The consequence of all this is distrust on the part of investors, potential buyers, and a slowdown in the pace of development;

2) the presence of problems associated with the global concept of e-commerce, including uncertainty about the real existence of a partner company in another part of the world and the product or service it offers, differences in traditions and rules of doing business among these companies;

3) the presence of security threats in electronic commerce, which can be minimized if effective and reliable mechanisms are in place to guarantee confidentiality, identification and authorization;

4) the need for universal standards of interaction and network compatibility so that, for example, all e-commerce participants have the opportunity to access company websites regardless of their geographic location or the characteristics of the networks with which they are connected;

5) the difficulty of involving new participants, associated with the lack of experienced sales managers, logisticians, marketers, and qualified service specialists, as a result of which attention is paid directly to the Internet (project design), and not to real trade as such, and the business loses potential buyers.

Nevertheless, we can talk about the seriousness and significance of the e-commerce market in our country by comparing Russian data with data from European countries.

Rice. 1. - Ratio of the share of online buyers in different countries (groups of countries) in 2009:

In addition, the Russian payment card market maintains positive development dynamics, both in the field of issuing and acquiring payment cards (Fig. 2).

Rice. 2. - Number of payment cards issued in the Russian Federation:

In Moscow alone, the number of online buyers is growing by 20-25% per year, and in the regions - by 40% per year. Among the macro-regions, the South is growing the fastest - the growth of the audience of online stores is 80%, the number of “e-commerce requests” is growing by 75%; the Far East is in second place, and the Urals is in third. Among individual regions, the leaders in terms of growth rates are the Krasnodar, Stavropol and Khabarovsk territories (growth of 90-120% per year).

The main trends of 2011 in Russia related to e-commerce:

An increase in the number of retailers seriously investing in online;

Influx of large investments in e-commerce;

Expanding the geography of delivery to the regions;

Increase in the number of online purchases abroad.

However, 2011 showed that the Russian e-commerce market is still far from the saturation stage. In 2012, it is planned to increase the number of online buyers by 25%, and increase the volume of online sales by 22% to 380 billion rubles. Thus, the share of e-commerce in the Russian economy will increase over time, and, therefore, its positive impact on the state economy and the standard of living of society will increase, and new profitable opportunities will appear:

Global presence and global choice;

Sales personalization;

Quick response to demand;

Cost reduction; commerce entrepreneurial trade

New business opportunities;

Further development of the competitive environment.

According to Russian scientists, three main factors of economic growth in the Internet economy and e-commerce can be identified:

1) the positive side effect of networks, which is a motivating factor on the Internet, when buyers and businesses find more and more benefits from using the Internet and involve each other in e-commerce processes;

2) complementary relationships between the components of Internet technologies, expressed in the fact that the value of using some IT components necessarily increases the value of others (for example, the growth of broadband Internet and the spread of broadband technologies forces application manufacturers to develop powerful multimedia applications for them);

3) low transaction costs (implementation of internal and external relations of the company and the exchange and management of knowledge within it affect the growth of economic efficiency).

Sources

1. Kobelev O.A. E-commerce: Textbook / ed. prof. S.V. Pirogov. - 2nd ed., revised. and additional - M.: Publishing and trading corporation "Dashkov and Co", 2006. - P. 14.

2. L. Goff (Lesley Goff) “Sabre is taking off” // Computerworld Russia No. 43 1999 M. Publishing house. "Open systems".

3. The essence of EDI is to create standardized documents and present them in a form convenient for further automated processing.

4. Electronic commerce: textbook. allowance / under general ed. L.A. Bragina. - M.: Economist, 2005. - P. 29.

5. E. Santarelli. The nature of e-commerce: Do transaction costs matter? Russian Journal of Management No. 3, 2004. - P. 36.

6. Yurasov A.V. “Basics of e-commerce”, Hotline-Telecom, Moscow, 2007.

7. C.L. Mann, Sue E. Eckert, S.C. Knight. Global Electronic Commerce. A Policy Primer. - Institute for international economics. 2000.

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