JAMPRO has taken another bold step towards pushing Jamaican companies closer to the centre of the global e-commerce explosion by launching a First World e-marketplace Web site that clearly provides the infrastructure to immediately elevate Jamaican businesses into the spiralling economy of on-line business transactions on the Internet.This e-marketplace Web site www.buyjatradepoint.com was developed by IMEX Technolo-gies which according to Chairman, Lennox Robinson, "has demonstrated beyond doubt that Jamaica possesses the expert skill sets to compete at any level with first world Internet business solutions."
The move is inevitable. E-commerce will dominate trade transactions throughout the world sooner rather than later. And with over 100,000 internet accounts and possibly 250,000 internet users, Jamaica is well poised to enter the e-world with a bang.
According to Pat Francis, president of JAMPRO, "we now have the critical mass to seriously begin offering Internet business solutions to Jamaican companies. The aim of our e-marketplace is to first provide Internet solutions for business to business (B2B) transactions and commercial activities.
"We strongly expect that corporate buyers will quickly use the services on the e-marketplace because of the obvious efficiencies and savings that the system offers. The second phase will include the business to consumer (B2C) segment of our economy."
The e-marketplace is designed to enable small, medium or large businesses to quickly begin buying and selling on the Internet by listing their products on the e-marketplace. The process is extremely simple.
JAMPRO will furnish each supplier with a set of software tools that allows each company to enter their products, product description, images, prices and any other promotional features into the software supplied to them.
The company then simply connects to the Internet and uploads these files to the e-marketplace Web site. This simple process places the company's products on www.buyjatradepoint.com and immediately enables the company to showcase their products before corporate buyers, accept orders or sell products on the Internet.
Compelling
The B2B model is quite compelling. Julie-Ann Dowding, operations manager of IMEX Technologies explains that "Purchasing managers can quickly use the system to conveniently find, review, compare and even contact, via e-mail, the suppliers of products which they are interested in purchasing. It provides these purchasing managers with wider choices, more information on the products they are interested in buying from different suppliers, along with the opportunity to review prices, look at an image of the product and inspect the features before buying decisions are made. It is a
must-have tool for all purchasing managers."
The concept is to connect buyers and sellers in a dynamic Internet environment so that the complete procurement process can be conducted in a secure and efficient on-line environment. Suppliers that do not display their products on the system will simply not have the opportunity for their products to be considered for a purchase via the e-marketplace.
Another major function of the e-marketplace is the dynamic, interactive procurement environment that it offers. Companies that register on the system will receive a Request for Quotation (RFQ) from the broad cross-section of companies that use the system.
A company simply logs on and types in the particular products that it wishes to purchase. This request is delivered immediately to suppliers who are registered on the system. Each supplier then has the option to respond to the RFQ. These responses are delivered via e-mail to the buyer. The end result - a purchasing manager will issue a single RFQ and, in turn, receive quotations from several suppliers. Suppliers need to register on the e-marketplace in order to receive these requests for quotations on products that they sell.
The B2C features are equally compelling. For example, the US$800 million of remittances that flows into Jamaica each year does suggest that there is a huge potential for Jamaicans living abroad to buy products at the e-marketplace and have these products shipped to a Jamaica address. Further, consumers can simply log onto the system, browse through the different categories, search for any product they wish to buy, send an order or conduct an on-line purchase with a credit card.
As far as credit card acceptance is concerned, Citibank has led the way in facilitating on-line transactions by providing a long-awaited solution to merchants who wish to conduct e-commerce transactions on the Internet.
For the first time, a Jamaican vendor can sell products on the Internet and receive the proceeds in their merchant account at Citibank.
