While the team at Retail Futures believes that the time is now ripe for electronic retailing, can there be such confidence given the failure of other, no less 'timely' concepts such as Cable TV and Videotext to be taken up?
John Andrews of Retail Futures is confident that it will be different for eCommerce. "The Superhighway will not go away. There is massive commitment both financially and intellectually to ensure that demand for Internet services will grow unabated."
There has been a progressive shake-out of the contenders for market share, with one vendor's platform accepted increasingly as the core of eCommerce solutions. The vendor singled out was inevitably Microsoft; partly because of the range of hardware on which the Microsoft Windows NT environment is supported. Having been implemented on clustered Compaq and quasi-mainframe hardware like the large Tandem machines, the Windows NT family can function on virtually whatever hardware a corporate might have implemented across its enterprise.
Since the Microsoft eCommerce platforms is supported on Windows NT, it would follow that the same technical strategy for electronic commerce can be implemented whatever the scale of business involved.
"The fact that Microsoft now controls the desktop interface with the enterprise network means that the vendor's environment is familiar to everyone in an organisation who has reason to use a PC workstation.
"Microsoft has experience across emerging technologies such as Web TV for Digital Interactive TV and, indirectly, through Teledesic for global satellite communications networks."
According to Andrews, an on-line system based on Microsoft technology and platforms is increasingly likely to be 'neutral' to the type of device and bandwidth involved. "This enables the service provider to develop core systems which will deliver the richest experience possible, commensurate with the comms device in use, and without having to re-engineer the core system, with its associated costs.
"In my considered opinion, Microsoft, with its breadth of systems and platforms; its energy, commitment and vision, is the partner of choice for entering the Digital Millennium."
With the establishment of the National eCommerce Centre, Retail Futures has the opportunity to take forward a long-standing involvement in promoting electronic commerce. As Chairman of the UK Government's Foresight Global Electronic Retailing group, for example, Andrews has been closely involved in examining the impact that global electronic commerce would have on the retail sector.
Rather than assess the opportunities which might be created in the United Kingdom and hope that these can be extrapolated to an international audience, the team at Retail Futures has been involved in cross-border projects. "One of the objectives was to test the cultural differences required to implement retail solutions successfully. In one joint venture, for example, we were involved in examining the implications of supporting currency conversion on the fly."
It was a short step from this environment to a national forum for eCommerce. Dialogue with Graham Beaumont, the Principal Business Development Officer of Birmingham City Council, helped identify a framework. "It needed a physical environment to which consumers could relate, which had style, and was a metaphor for the objectives we were setting out. The University of Central England at Birmingham met that criterion and the concept has evolved there through Peter Nicholls, Director of the Digital Media Centre.
The financial commitment of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) has been instrumental to the establishment of the Centre, which has attracted the support of partners including Barclays Bank, Compaq and Microsoft. It is Retail Future's role to operate the Centre under an International Management Board which draws on the experience of Forrester Research. Supported by ERDF funding the Centre is required to exploit its research and development commercially. The approach is to work with both SMEs and large corporates, supporting these companies with operational, marketing and technical resources. Were Retail Futures to be another player on the cab-rank of consultants, the company would no doubt be assured of its fair share of the custom available. But its participation in the National Centre for Global Electronic Commerce alongside regional and national government, and the academic community, should create an opportunity to turn the theory of eCommerce to the long-term economic advantage not only of its customer base, but of the UK region of which its operations form a part.
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