As part of the Ministry of Finance-funded “Enhancing administration skills for small and medium-sized enterprises through IT application in the 2011-2013 period” project, the Ho Chi Minh City Investment and Trade Promotion Centre (ITPC) organised a conference on e-commerce-driven export promotion in an attempt to create opportunities for local businesses to access and accelerate e-commerce application to boost export growth. This is also an opportunity for professionals and management agencies to provide useful information for businesses to effectively apply e-commerce to production and business activities.
Remarking on the importance of e-commerce application in export promotion, Ms Nguyen Thanh Xuan, ITPC Deputy Director, said: With its superior features like time saving, effort saving and money saving for economic transactions, e-commerce has today become an important trade channel recognised by many countries. It is certain that e-commerce application in production and business activities is an indispensable trend and Vietnam impossibly stays out of this universal development trend when it is integrating with the world. On this occasion, she also informed ITPC’s support policies for exporters, particularly information, order and market approach recommendations.
Mr Tran Dinh Toan, Deputy General Director of OSB Company - an official authorised agent for Alibaba.com Group in Vietnam, said that economic turmoil has sent many businesses into dilemma, especially exporters. This reality has forced businesses to self-refresh and wisely choose strategic directions to regain export growth, expand markets, and
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ITPC and OSB Company introduced a 45-percent golden membership fee discount package for exporters in Ho Chi Minh City and surrounding areas in an effort to encourage online export via Alibaba.com. The support package, valued at VND21 billion, is expected to reach 500 enterprises from now till the end of 2012. This project is expected to help Vietnamese exporters to overcome the current difficult period.
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seek more new customers. And, result-based and cost-effective solutions are most practical for businesses in this tough time, especially small and medium enterprises.
Toan added that online export and online marketing tendencies are adopted by more and more companies in the world because of numerous economic benefits. Importers and buyers are paying attention to e-commerce floors and online trading. And, the rate of successful deals based on e-commerce is five times higher than conventional ways which are on the decline because of more time and financial costs. Using e-commerce, businesses have access to information about partners and market demands to adjust business operations. In addition, they boost popularise their images, products and services to customers but also save time and maximise profits.
However, experts participating at the workshop recommended that to successfully apply e-commerce to business activities, enterprises need to view online export channel as a part of business strategies in order to have appropriate e-commerce approach and to invest in e-commerce store as a way to optimise costs and achieve highest efficiency. Besides, they only need to recruit and train e-commerce specialists.
Importantly, they must choose highly reliable e-commerce channels where they can check information about trade partners to ward off risks in promoting online trade.
Thanh Thao
Vietnamese
