Meanwhile, as the development environment for E-business matures, SMBs' E-business demands have also changed from simple website building to online payment, transaction platform and backstage information management. In the face of these demands, the Eleventh Five-Year Plan also encourages basic carriers to develop information processing, data hosting, application systems and other IT outsourcing services for government departments, enterprises and public utility units to lower the cost of information system building and E-business applications.
For the IT application and E-business market among SMBs, China Telecom has introduced business navigation, China Netcom broadband business and China Mobile mobile business. Though carriers have network and resource advantages, their understanding of SMBs' E-business demand is not sufficient. In the market, they continue to adopt the model of standardized products and product integration platforms in the hopes of using products to open the SMB market. But, most SMBs are in a fast growth stage. Expanding the market through E- business is their primary demand. Together with the restrictions of inadequate understanding of E-business, weak IT infrastructure, and small capital input, SMBs have a low level of acceptance of E-business products and a narrow scope of applications. Consequently, carriers have made slow progress in the SMB E- business market. They still have much to do in terms of market positioning development models and market promotion.
CCID thinks that quantifying services will be the foundation for carriers to provide SMB customers with innovative and superior quality services. Relative to products, services are a process. It is very difficult for customers to directly feel the value of services. As a result, large-scale promotion of services in the market becomes difficult. Currently, how to quantify services and visually display their effects to customers has become the new issue facing carriers. In relation to the characteristics of SMBs' E- business, there is a need to quantify the E-business services workflow first, and break down the overall services into different workflows.
Every service is a combination of several workflows. Workflow quantification can promote customers to learn about the expected functions of services. Secondly, the work of every employee is also a combination of different work tasks in the workflow. This provides the basis for quantifying and assessing employee's work. It helps carriers to establish a professional and highly qualified services force. Thirdly, quantitative services help both operators and customers to effectively control cost and let customers clearly understand the whereabouts of every penny. Finally, as for market promotion, third party agencies may be invited to survey customer satisfaction and use credible data to move customers.
To sum up, carriers have a lot of growth potential in the SMB E-business market. As long as they persist in providing SMBs with quantitative and superior quality services, sizeable growth of the operator E-business market will be something realizable in the near term.
