Technology, payment platforms, service providers and logistics are the biggest problems faced by digital business entrepreneurs
The digital entrepreneurs find the greatest difficulties to start their projects in the lack of preparation and adequate infrastructure of the market, which continues to prevail over traditional businesses. Technology, payment platforms, the service of product suppliers and logistics are the aspects that generate the most problems when creating an online business. These are the main conclusions revealed by a group of eight entrepreneurs, all students of the Master in Internet Business (MIB), during a round table organized by ISDI to discuss digital entrepreneurship.
The main conclusions of the meeting aim to define the market as little mature for digital businesses, which adds special difficulties to create companies and, in some cases, causes delays in the launching period and loss of income in different ways. The biggest difficulties that entrepreneurs point out are:
Technology: It is an essential and absolutely differential element in almost all digital businesses, but there are still problems to find adequate suppliers with sufficient technical training and response capacity to meet the high demand of day-to-day business incidents. your needs for growth and adaptation. The main complaints are focused on lack of specialization in some platforms or leading systems and delays and lack of service agility. Most entrepreneurs have had problems in this regard and advise other professionals that when the technology is critical in their business model, instead of going to an external provider, consider being part of the project from the beginning and falling on someone of the founding team.
Suppliers : Although the entrepreneurs who participated in the workshops are focused on very varied sectors, the coincidence was absolute when pointing out that there is no culture in to serve digital companies. Product suppliers give priority to companies with a physical store compared to e-commerce who, in many cases, take time to serve or force them to buy a stock of product, which causes delays in serving orders and an increase in sales. costs that considerably reduces the margins of the business and compromises its survival. Stock disruption and the inconvenience that suppliers place on serving small orders.
Banking: Secure means of payment are essential for developing an e-commerce business, but banks are still little prepared to offer them a platform (POS) for online payment. In this case, the problem is the lack of information in the branches, which are the natural interlocutors of the companies, while there are very few banks that have a business unit specialized in the digital field. In the advice section, in this case, the founders of e-commerce believe that you should not depend on a single provider; and that a system like PayPal is not the panacea: it offers good service and security but it is excessively expensive: its commissions can reach 3.8% compared to 0.8 for banks. On the other hand,
Logistics : In the case of logistics, the problem facing entrepreneurs is the costs for products that require special care, such as fragile (bottles) or those that need refrigeration (fresh products). They also become considerably more expensive in shipments to towns or towns far from urban centers where, in addition, there is a significant volume of electronic commerce. Insurance on transport, meanwhile, does not cover the price in products of more than 20 euros.
Financing: When it comes to financing, the MIB entrepreneurs coincided in pointing out that, compared to the culture that exists in other countries such as the United States, venture capital investors act by drowning the entrepreneurs rather than accompanying them in the process, an attitude that adds even more difficulties to the usual ones when it comes to finding financing. Most of the projects start with a low budget and self-financing.
Fraud : Fraud in electronic commerce has a decreasing incidence: it has fallen to between 1 and 2%, when until recently it was between 4 and 5% of orders, at the same level as in off line (traditional) trade. It is relatively simple to detect in foreign-named orders, foreign card numbers and very high amounts, being the most common cases for small quantities.
