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The phenomenal growth explosion of E-commerce continues to surpass all of the analysts' expectations. The New World Economy is reshaping the way we do business. The challenges that lie ahead for many companies will be to sustain the growth momentum domestically while gaining market-share internationally. Being able to adapt to all of the multi-cultural economic demands will be of paramount importance.
Gaining global success will mean that you will need a customised ‘Business- dashboard’ to navigate your business in and across Europe. Understanding cultural differences, overcoming language barriers, regional and perhaps even religious buying trends and sales cycles will be paramount. In January 2002, most of Europe joined together in a one-currency ‘Euro’ culture, collectively becoming a larger e-commerce market than the United States, however the cultures did not change with the currency and so all the difficulties of business remain.
Typically, many U.S. startups will tend to focus only on the domestic market, due mainly to resource and financial constrictions. Activities such as bringing a professional team of sales, marketing and technical people on board and developing the appropriate sales are usually the most time consuming. Combine those tasks with obtaining the essential financial backing leaves no time for the European market. European Commerce Facts
• Forrester Research, an independent firm that analyses the future of technology change and its impact on business, consumers and society, estimates the European Union's online trade potential will reach Euro 2.6 trillion in 2006. It refers to Europe as “the sleeping giant.”
• The European Union is leading the fight against trading fraud, consumer waste and manufacturing mis-conduct. This has meant ever increasing regulations and controls being imposed on businesses. This has seen the rapid growth of technology in business to help companies meet the demands of auditors and compliance officers.
• 62% of all mobile phone users have access to email and web services due to the ease of connecting to high speed services such as 3G.
• In Saudi Arabia men and women have separate ISPs
• Norway leads the Internet connections in Europe at 76.3%
• Italy has the fastest growing IT sector for Healthcare
• Government services are being driven to the internet and most UK high street banks are closing their local branches and switching to online services. In Germany the trend is the opposite where consumer demand has meant the increase in local banking services and the take up of credit cards is the lowest in Europe.
• European companies are looking for flexible solutions to meet the ever changing market drivers. This has increased the level of outsourced services ranging from server operations to core database systems. Due to this, separation of duties is a constant discussion point and the need to prove compliance and non-repudiation of transactions in a fragmented world is a challenge and is predicted to increase ten fold over the next three years.
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