| Ecommerce's Monthly Talking Point - March 2000 Pump Up The Volume While the great British public goes dotcom crazy, technology watchers are gearing up for an explosion in mobile commerce. The current focus is on stoking the mobile commerce story from the consumer's point of view: painting pictures of a world in which we're liberated to, um, order pizza from a handheld device. (What is it about ordering pizza and articles about consumer ecommerce? Someone had better think of application number two, and fast.) What are the implications of mobile commerce for business? There are two major effects, both linked to shifts in behaviour facilitated by mobile commerce. In the first place, people will make more ecommerce transactions as the boot barrier disappears. To do anything online today you need to be sat down with a happy PC and a cable. That's not so good for the impulsive behaviour which characterises our lives. An online device that you carry around with you - that is part of your life equipment - becomes an instinctive tool. People will interact with systems more frequently, more fragmentedly. Now think about the business environment itself. Doesn't this look like a world in which single-location lifestyles and pre-planned actions have had their day? Today's workers are increasingly out in the field, with their customers. Yet they need to be attached to the corporate brain too. Mobile commerce is a route to creating pervasive, roaming ebusinesses. Mobile means more: more enquiry transactions, more purchase transactions, more status checks... More volume. If you're just getting used to intra-day thinking, get ready for real-time, high-volume transaction loads on your systems. |