E-commerce

Assignment
Empire Industries Limited
E-commerce assignment: Build an ecommerce business
platform for Empire Industrial Equipment to facilitate the
sourcing & selling of capital equipment.

Prepared By:-
Welingkar Institute of Nidhi Dharsandiya – 14
Management Development & Vaibhav Gaur – 19
Research
Farzad Havaldar – 25
MMM 2018 - 2021 Joel Rodrigues - 85

02/03/2019
Business Brief: Empire Industrial Equipment is a marketing company to various foreign companies that
are based abroad. We provide marketing assistance to these companies & they become our Principal
Partners where the technology is supplied by our foreign partners & any portion of the equipment that
can be sourced indigenously is done as a part of a subcontract to reduce our prices & ultimately to pass
on benefit of the same to our customer.

E-commerce business models: The E-Business models that are associated with our company are

1. Business to Business (B2B)

2. Business to Government (B2G)

A. Attributes of the business

Empire is into the business of capital equipment selling. Capital Equipment as the name suggests is
highly capital intensive to procure & also the average lifespan of capital equipment is at least a decade
on an average. Thus when a client requires these kinds of equipment, they should have a one stop
source for all their capital equipment needs. Here most of this equipment is sourced from abroad, so if
the end user goes directly to the foreign supplier, most of the time their request for a quotation gets lost
& only is white noise to the foreign supplier.

Empire as a facilitator usually interfaces with the clients & end users on a regular basis & hence has a lot
of information on the projects & the requirements of the end users & clients. Thus we manage to ensure
the foreign supplier takes up the enquiry on priority basis.

B. Entities & Revenues

There are primarily two major entities involved in this business.

i. Foreign Supplier: The first & most important entity of our business in the foreign supplier
which is colloquially termed as the Foreign Principal in our business. They are the Original
Equipment Manufacturers. These Principals pay us commission for sales of their equipment.
In addition to this they also subcontract us for any local procurement & inland
transportation, customs clearance as well as any installation & commissioning support.
These suppliers are one of our sources of income.
ii. End user/Client: This is the second entity of the selling process. The client has come to have
faith on our company as a reliable partner that will suggest a suitable technology that exist
or will look for alternatives that that will be tailored to their needs. This is why we maintain
our stand of not having any official agreement with any of our foreign Principals. Thus, we as
a company are not legally obligated to forcefully sell their products to our clients while we
know that there is a better technology available that is the best suited to our client’s needs.
We have always maintained that the client’s needs are paramount. In some cases our
foreign principal is not familiar with the bidding process especially with the B2G business
model. In such cases where Government Tenders are issued as International Competitive
Bidding Tenders, the agent or representative is allowed to bid on the foreign principal’s
 behalf. In such cases, we add a profit margin over the quotation received from the foreign
supplier & bid to the end user/client. This is another way we earn profit.

C. Sales Process & Fullfilmet of Client’s Requirements

An E-commerce platform linked with our website where instead of just displaying the foreign companies
that we represent, an end user or a client will not only browse the list of equipment & equipment
manufacturers we represent but send us, i.e. Empire Industrial Equipment a Request for Quotation. In
this case, the Enquiry form the end user/client is routed through Empire & we can communicate the
same to the foreign principal along with the level of urgency that has been communicated by the client
to us.

Empire also deals a lot with rotary equipment that is highly service oriented for ex:- pumps,
compressors, etc. A separate portal that is exclusively for all the service needs of the end user/client
where he can post an official break down or request for a maintenance crew, over and above the phone
call & email being sent. Usually only a single point of contact exists for all service operations. In this
portal, any service engineer posted in the region also gets an official ping directly from the portal along
with all the information that the client has supplied. This would help the engineer to be well prepared
with all tools & tackles when he reaches the site thus reducing the down time. This particular tool would
be extremely useful in our setup as we have a pan-India operation with a presence in all major metro
cities of the country. This cuts down the time required for internal coordination & scheduling the
maintenance visits.

D. Online Governance
The E-commerce platform provides a very high level of automation, but the last mile connectivity in
terms of ensuring the right information is passed on to the foreign principal at the right time will still
have to be done manually in the sense, an email communication will have to be sent followed by a
telephone call the ensure the communication has been received by the foreign principal & get a verbal
confirmation for the receipt of the enquiry as well as an expected date of the receipt of the quotation
from the foreign principal. This would ensure that we would be able to reply to the end user/client
during follow up calls. On the back end, there will be a section for updates & follow-up from the foreign
supplier as well as the client both before & after submitting the offer. These updates would be viewed
by the lead sales person’s manager to guide & if require step in during the sales process.

After sales service is one of the most parameters that a client looks at when looking at future
requirement for a similar kind of equipment. A prompt response to a breakdown call is extremely
important & in the process of finalizing whose jurisdiction the maintenance call should be logged a lot of
precious time & more importantly client goodwill is lost. The E-commerce system is extremely efficient
in the sense of taking into consideration the GPS location of the nearest available engineer & factoring in
his schedule to decide who will visit the client.