Accounting software developer Brilliant Business Systems is pursuing an all-embracing e-commerce solution for SME businesses - one that is based upon telephony integration as well as the Internet. Brilliant maintains that the telephony integration route is a way for SMEs to immediately reach most of their consumers, while the Internet could take another 18 months to fully penetrate the markets served by SMEs.
"There is a lot of hype about e-commerce and its definition," says Andre van Rooyen, e-business manager at Brilliant Business Systems, a company in the JSE-listed Softline Limited group.
"The hype leads people to believe that e-commerce means purely using the Internet to conduct business. This would be more accurately called I-commerce, while e-commerce is a broader concept covering the electronic enablement of a business -- replacing manual processes with electronics in order to free up staff to focus on customer relationship management because CRM is about the only area left in which modern businesses can really differentiate themselves."
Van Rooyen adds that the problem with I-commerce in South Africa is that Internet penetration to consumers overall is only about 6 percent. While this penetration is much greater in the higher income groups, it is nowhere near the level achieved by the telephone. By and large Internet technology has not yet reached the majority of the population and it will take some years to do so.
"The telephone, by contrast, already has a penetration much closer to 100 percent. It is also highly reliable. Our focus has therefore been on developing and delivering a more all-embracing e-commerce solution that will work for more than just the Internet-enabled sector of the population. Hence we are introducing a telephony integration solution to complement our I-commerce solution.
"Our telephony integration software will enable SMEs using our accounting software to quickly be in a position to conduct e-commerce using existing equipment at minimum cost."
The Brilliant solution will position SMEs to conduct business 24-hours a day with consumers that have DTMF touch-tone telephones. All the business needs is a telephone, a modem and a PC. The software will answer the business telephone over the modem and allow the consumer calling in to place orders using the touch-tone facilities.
"The software places the order accepted via the modem directly into the accounting software program. The business owner can then process orders received via telephone through the accounting software in the usual way, converting the order into an invoice, updating stock and so on," says van Rooyen. "This is an efficient, reliable and low-cost way of e-commerce enabling small businesses to the majority of consumers. As with all of our accounting and payroll software products, we will be making the software available in return for an annual licence fee."
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