The JSE-listed company, Synergy Holdings Limited, through its subsidiary Vortex Communications has been granted sole distribution rights of INEX CommerceCourt for Southern Africa. INEX, which is Canadian-based, provides an incredibly simple yet immensely powerful E-commerce solution, and has been well sought after by other South African solution providers. Synergy Holdings Director, Patrick Toolan said " we believe this is a coup for the Group and see this as a great opportunity to take the South African E-commerce market by storm."
Commenting on the state of E-Commerce in South Africa, Sandy-Ann Bewick, Business Manager of Vortex Communications said, "the problem is that companies are just not looking at the e-commerce solution from both the buyers' and sellers' points of view, be it business to business or business to consumer. We did some market research in our client base and put some people on the street to speak to consumers. The results of the consumer research was incredibly disappointing ("E-what?"), but the seller side was far more encouraging".
"Sellers were very interested in going online but they weren't interested in spending the amounts of money required to set up a site," added Bewick. "A simple costing brought the price to R95 000 (Site Server, Server to Host Site, Software for the Server, Connection to Internet, Set-up), plus R7 000 a month and we haven't even started talking about routers, design, setup and ongoing maintenance. Not a cheap exercise if you are a small to medium size business.
This presents an obvious opportunity. If you can offer an affordable, yet powerful solution, you should be able to take huge marketshare.
What should the solution have:
Ability to be hosted at a commerce service provider (eliminating the bulk of the cost mentioned above).
Straightforward and simple method of setting up a store (Don't need the Ph.D. in Computer Science).
Visually appealing, and extensively customizable for individuality.
What would be nice for the solution to have:
Integration to the accounts system so the seller can easily integrate product and customer information.
Multiple price levels for varying customer types (Business to Business customers)
Based on MS Site Server to allow future Biztalk Compatibility
There were other issues raised in the market research that were interesting:
The sellers don't want the orders to automatically update the accounts system until they have manually checked them - until they trust the mechanism.
Security, Security, Security.
INEX CommerceCourt Suite satisfies all of the above criteria and more, and at only R20 000, makes it one of the most affordable E-commerce solutions on the market. INEX are moving between 300 and 600 copies a month in the United States and our target is 400 stores in the next year. "Vortex Communications has already sold 3, and we have only just signed distribution rights" said Sandy-Ann Bewick.
INEX Commerce Court software applications extend Microsoft technologies into complete Internet Commerce solutions. Together with a Microsoft platform, these software applications enable small to medium sized businesses around the world to create and manage a Web store with an online electronic catalogue, for marketing and selling products over the Internet.
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