Thursday, September 28, 2006 Toral: Growing interest of SMEs in e-commerce By Janette Toral Digital Filipino
LAST week, we celebrated the seventh anniversary of Digital Filipino.com by holding One Internet Day in Manila, Cebu and Davao.
More than 300 participants, mostly small and medium enterprises (SMEs), participated in the affair. Presentation materials and photos can be accessed at http://www.e-commercephilippines.com.
The help of the Department of Trade and Industry, National Computer Center-Cebu, and the Association of Solution Integrators in Davao are most crucial to the success of the event. The response clearly sends the message that there is a growing interest by SMEs in e-commerce.
Maoi Arroyo, chief executive officer of Hybridigm Consulting, emphasized the new role of blogging for promotion and possible exposure from the influentials. She urges companies to use the power of blogs for buzz marketing.
I’m excited also in finding out more about YesPayment’s upcoming payment solution for small merchants. As of this time, there are now several e-payment solutions provider in the country trying to tap the growing SME market interested in doing e-commerce.
With the holiday season, companies like YOSSN.com and Load.com.ph, along with YesPayments will be most in demand among merchants wanting to sell products online.
With Internet bandwidth getting faster and affordable, wireless technologies are also booming. In serving areas that has limited infrastructure resources, offering mobile point of sale solutions is an increasing need seen by entrepreneurs and payment service providers such as Innove.
However, this can only materialize if there will be more application providers and banking institutions building innovative solutions in this area and partnering with carriers.
InfoWeapons, an IPV6 solutions developer, shared its campaign also in hiring a lot of people to join their company. Lawrence Hughes and Manny Amador emphasized the huge IPV6 market in countries like the USA and Japan.
The Philippines currently has an edge globally in this area but can only be sustained if it will be able to continuously build solutions.
Leah Tirol Magno, dubbed as Internet Princess of Bohol wowed the Cebu crowd as she shared her story on how she operates Bohol-Island.com from her bedroom and make millions by selling real estate online.
Her passion in building websites about Bohol for free is compensated through Google AdSense placement, which is now contributing significantly to her income.
Sheryl Ygay of Sun.Star Online also shared the latest ePaper online product of the publication that gives overseas readers the chance to subscribe and read the newspaper in its fullest form, with all advertisements intact.
Congratulations are in order to Lauro Vives for his new TV program, Venture, which is aired on ANC channel of Sky Cable and Home Cable subscribers every Sunday evening. This program focuses on the various issues on ICT in business.
