E-commerce will soon rebound

E-commerce will soon rebound

In cooperation with the Asian GLOBE-The Jakarta CEO Club and
MarkPlus & Co. management consulting firm, this new column is
designed to look at the visions and strategic views of CEOs of
Indonesian and multinational companies operating in Indonesia. It
will appear every Thursday with the support of marketing guru
Hermawan Kertajaya. The following is the first piece on the CEO
of PT SAP Asia in Indonesia, a subsidiary of the Germany-based e-
commerce software solutions provider. It's compiled by The
Jakarta Post reporter K. Basrie.

Over the past few years, the world witnessed the ugly ruin of
online businesses. Many firmly insist that the online world has
been something of a bust. So what went wrong?

Many blame the failure on the costs, which were higher than
expected and the benefits more elusive than anticipated.
Liquidity, rather than the build-out capabilities, quickly became
the number one priority for many dot-coms as they struggled to
survive.

Most of the dot-coms were geared on how to gain capital from
the market, rather than how to give value to customers.

Does the future still hold a grim outlook after the well-
publicized sad story of the Internet world? Early efforts have
stumbled, to be sure. But many now doubt it will be as grim as
thought. They say there'll be a change very soon.

Take a brief look at world-class companies around the globe.
From procurement to product design to supply chain management,
the Internet and the e-commerce have changed the way
organizations operate and enterprises serve customers and win the
fierce competition.

The community, still small but growing, believes that e-
commerce is a permanent feature on the business landscape.

Krisnendu Datta, managing director of PT SAP Indonesia,
believes that the real players of e-commerce are beginning to
evolve and return in different forms.

"As that evolves, we'll see people's confidence coming back
and taking more e-commerce-based solutions into their business,"
he said in a recent interview.

SAP, Datta went on, survived when the bubble burst because "we
did not jump on the dot-com bandwagon and try to play the initial
public offering (IPO) game and try to run and acquire a few
companies with high market capitalization. Instead we focused on
how we could enrich our solutions using e-commerce technology,
using e-commerce tools and then going back to the same and other
customers with added value."

According to Datta, it is high time companies in Indonesia get
in the e-commerce market.

A rich bachelor will never be ready to marry, Datta said.

"So, I don't think there's any particular time to go for e-
commerce. The time is now. The time is always there."

One, he added, can choose areas to go by looking at one's own
business model by looking at what he can achieve in the end. E
-commerce should not be driven by technology or be something to
do just because everyone else is doing it.

And globalization also offers opportunities and challenges,
instead of risks alone.

"As a global player, our main challenge at SAP is how ready
the market is, in terms of people's ability and what the IT does
for them."

Datta, who has been in the IT industry for 14 years, reminded
that growth is not the sole goal in the business world since
growth is sometimes uncontrolled and unprofitable.

"That's why growth alone is not the only thing we should
challenge in business."

Based on his experience, there are two fundamentals ways to
grow.

"First, grow in your solution set by offering more products
and solution within the same customer base or within the same
geography, or you can enhance your geography with the same
solution set.

"Do either one or you can do a combination. In SAP's case,
we're doing both," Datta said.

Indonesia, Datta said, is home to roughly 4,000 firms with
yearly earnings of between US$30 million and $40 million, which
has become the main target of SAP Indonesia.

"About 60 percent of the market is still untapped," he said.

He, thus, urges IT players to grab the opportunities.

"The question is the timeframe. This market still needs a
certain amount of awareness, infrastructure, knowledge base for
IT to grow and that takes time," he said, adding that the perfect
time to get in would be over the next five years.

But he suggests that knowledge is a crucial element for any
company to grow and develop in such a competitive era.

Unfortunately, knowledge does not appear on the balance sheet.

Today, he said, knowledge management is not about acquiring
knowledge alone but about sharing knowledge with others,
including employees.

Having dozens of knowledgeable workers is far better and more
powerful than having only one knowledgeable manager, he said.

Well, while there's uncertainty about the speed of change,
there's no question about the direction of change. And let the
rich bachelor make his own judgment.