Tag: Information technology in Business notes

Company Fixed Deposit (corporate FD) is a term deposit which is held over fixed period at fixed rates of interest. Company Fixed Deposits are offered by Financial and Non-Banking financial companies (NBFCs). The maturities of various company fixed deposits can range from a few months to a few years.

Factors before choosing Corporate FD schemes to invest in.

• Company Background: Assess a company’s business viability by referring to its Financial Statements, Management Discussion and Analysis (MD & A).
• Credit Rating: Opt for higher-rated corporate FDs based on its credit rating which indicates the underlying risk of the company.
• Repayment History: Companies repayment history helps to determine company’s credit score, credibility and stability.

Reasons to invest:

Short-Term Investments

One of the major advantages of investing in corporate FDs is short-term investments. Bank FDs can be anywhere between a few months to a few years, but corporate FDs cannot exceed more than five years of timeframe, and this makes it a viable option when investors want high returns in a short duration of time.

Interest rates

Corporate FDs are the best in interest rates compared to banks. Considering a debt instrument where the investor needs higher returns, Corporate FDs can find the best fit. These are not influenced by the market performance and the fluctuations in the interest rate and provide much better returns than banks and other financial institutions.

Likewise to the banks, Corporate FDs also take care of the senior citizens. Here, senior citizens can find stability and attractive periodic money that can make life easier. Besides, the interest rates for senior citizens are higher than the banking schemes, which makes it a much more viable option when choosing to invest in FDs.

Ratings and Comparisons

Several corporates offer FDs, but which is the right company to invest the money as a Fixed Deposit? This is a common problem, and to solve this, investors can check the ratings of corporates given by CARE (Credit Analysis and Research Limited), CRISIL(Credit Rating Information Services of India Limited), or ICRA (Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency of India Limited) and then make a wise decision. These ratings are given to corporate after examining the company records, repayments, and interest rates which help potential investors by giving them a clear picture.

Company ratings are in the format AAA, AA, BBB, and more. AAA is the highest rating which signifies an investor can find a potential money hive after investing in such a company. This also gives a clear comparison with other companies, and investors can stop investing in a AA or BBB rating.

Solid Comparison

Several corporates offer Fixed Deposits but not all the corporates offer the same interest rate, they vary, and sometimes the marginal difference is too high. It is better to compare the corporates first before investing and check if they have better CARE, CRISIL, and ICRA ratings. AAA rating is considered to be the best.

Nominee

Nominee can be chosen by the investors when investing in corporate FDs, and this gives a greater advantage for investors. If the investor is holding a huge amount in the corporate Fixed Deposit and there is a sudden unfortunate demise of the investor, the nominee can take charge and possess all the money.

There is a higher return with the Corporate Fixed deposits compared to bank FDs, but there are a few notes that the investors should make before investing in Corporate FDs,

Research

One of the things that most investors do is only follow the rating system. Investors should check the company’s track record with profit and loss-making history. If the loss is a one-time or exceptional case and the track record is much positive. It can stand as a great investment opportunity for corporate FDs. Besides, it is a good practice to know the company’s plans and analyze if it will cause a positive or negative impact overall.

Premature Withdrawals

Most banks penalize the FD investors for premature withdrawals. This is usually around three months after investing. The situation is the same with Corporate FDs, and there is a penalty for premature withdrawal. It is best to know the penalty before investing.

Objectives of NSE

National Stock Exchange of India (NSEI) commenced operations in Whole- sale Debt Market (WDM) in June 1994 and trading in equities has been started in the Capital Market Segment (CM) in November 1994.

• To establish nationwide trading facility for equities and debt instruments.
• To provide a fair, transparent and efficient securities market to investors using electronic trading system.
• To ensure equal access to investors all over the country through an appropriate communication network.
• To improve the standard of securities market to international level.

Objectives of BSE

The full form of BSE is the Bombay Stock Exchange. The BSE is the oldest stock exchange of Asia which was established in the year 1875 as Native Shares and Stock Broker’s Association and is the first exchange in India that was recognized as the exchange in the year 1957 under the Securities Contract (Regulation) Act by the government. Since then, it is playing a pivotal role in the development of the capital market of the country.

• To provide a trading platform for equities of small and medium enterprises.
• To provide an efficient and transparent market for trading in equity, debt instruments, derivatives, and mutual funds.
• To ensure active trading and safeguard market integrity through an electronically-driven exchange.
• To provide other services to capital market participants, like risk management, clearing, settlement, market data, and education.
• To conform to international standards.

Objectives of OTCEI

The establishment of the Over the Counter Exchange of India (OTCEI) marked the down of a new era in the history of a stock exchanges in India. It is regarded a blessing for the small, both existing and new, companies and for investors, particularly small investors. The OTCEI which was incorporated in 1990 become fully operational in 1992.

Over The Counter Exchange of India allows nationwide listing and trading in securities, widely disbursed trading across centres provides for greater liquidity and less risk of intermediary charges, there is no arbitrage. The main feature is screen based scrip less trading, settlement is faster and no physical delivery of scrips is involved. The approach is highly professional.

• National Network:

Unlike other Stock Exchanges, the Over the Counter Exchange will have a nationwide reach enability widely dispersed trading across the cities, resulting in greater liquidity. Companies, thus, have the unique benefit of nationwide listing and trading of their script by listing at one exchange, Over the Counter Exchange.

• Ringless Trading:

Over the Counter Exchange has eliminated the traditional trading ring with a view to have greater accessibility to the investors. Trading will instead take place through a network of computers (screen based) of Over the Counter dealers at located several places within the same city and even across cities. These computers allow dealers to quote, query and transact through a central Over the Counter computer using telecommunication links. Investors can walk into any of the counters of members and dealers and see the quote display on the screen, decide to deal and conclude the transaction.

• Computerized Totally:

All the activities of the Over the Counter trading process will be computerized, making for more transparent, quick and disciplined mark. The trading mechanism brings on these features of the system.

• Two Ways of Making Public Offer:

Another unique of Over the Counter Exchange of India is its two ways of making public offer. Under ‘direct offer’ a company can offer its shares directly to the public after getting it sponsored by sponsored but under indirect offer’, the company may give its shares first to the sponsor who along with the company can at a later and convenient time make a public offer.

• Exclusive List of Companies:

The Over the Counter Exchange will not list and trade in companies listed on any other stock exchange. It will therefore list an entirely new set of companies sponsored by members of the Over-the-Counter Exchange.

• Faster Transfers and Trading Without Shares:

Over the Counter trading also provides for transfer of shares by Registrars, up to a certain percentage per folio. This results in faster transfers. The concept of immediate settlement makes it better for the investors. Investors will trade, not with share certificates, but with a different tradable documents called Counter Receipt (CR). However, an investor can always exercise his right of having a share certificate for Counter Receipt surrendering the Counter Receipt and again exchanging the share certificate for Counter Receipt when he wants to trade. There will be a custodian who will provide this facility along with a settler who will do the signature verification and Counter Receipt validation.

• Investor Registration:

Yet another feature of Over the Counter Exchange of India is investor registration, introduced for the first time in India. The investor registration is required to be done only once and is valid for trading on any Over the Counter in the country in any scrip. The purpose of the investor registration is to facilitate computerized trading. It also provides greater safety of operations to the investors.

The National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE) is the leading stock exchange of India, located in Mumbai. The NSE was established in 1992 as the first demutualized electronic exchange in the country. NSE was the first exchange in the country to provide a modern, fully automated screen-based electronic trading system which offered easy trading facility to the investors spread across the length and breadth of the country. Vikram Limaye is Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of NSE.

National Stock Exchange has a total market capitalization of more than US$2.27 trillion, making it the world’s 11th-largest stock exchange as of April 2018. NSE’s flagship index, the NIFTY 50, the 50 stock index is used extensively by investors in India and around the world as a barometer of the Indian capital markets. Nifty 50 index was launched in 1996 by the NSE. However, Vaidyanathan (2016) estimates that only about 4% of the Indian economy / GDP is actually derived from the stock exchanges in India.

Benefits

To the Investors

• Availability of regular information on prices of securities traded at the stock exchanges helps them in deciding on the timing of their purchase and sale.
• The investors enjoy the ready availability of facility and convenience of buying and selling the securities at will and at an opportune time.
• Because of the assured safety in dealings at the stock exchange the investors are free from any anxiety about the delivery and payment problems.
• It becomes easier for them to raise loans from banks against their holdings in securities traded at the stock exchange because banks prefer them as collateral on account of their liquidity and convenient valuation.

To the Companies

• The market for their securities is enlarged as the investors all over the world become aware of such securities and have an opportunity to invest.
• The companies whose securities have been listed on a stock exchange enjoy a better goodwill and credit-standing than other companies because they are supposed to be financially sound.
• As a result of enhanced goodwill and higher demand, the value of their securities increases and their bargaining power in collective ventures, mergers, etc. is enhanced.
• The companies have the convenience to decide upon the size, price and timing of the issue.

To the Society

• The facility for convenient purchase and sale of securities at the stock exchange provides support to new issue market. This helps in promotion and expansion of industrial activity, which in turn contributes, to increase in the rate of industrial growth.
• The availability of lucrative avenues of investment and the liquidity thereof induces people to save and invest in long-term securities. This leads to increased capital formation in the country.
• The Stock exchanges facilitate realisation of financial resources to more profitable and growing industrial units where investors can easily increase their investment substantially.
• The volume of activity at the stock exchanges and the movement of share prices reflect the changing economic health.
• Since government securities are also traded at the stock exchanges, the government borrowing is highly facilitated. The bonds issued by governments, electricity boards, municipal corporations and public sector undertakings (PSUs) are found to be on offer quite frequently and are generally successful.

Limitations of Stock Exchanges

Like any other institution, the stock exchanges too have their limitations. One of the common evils associated with stock exchange operations is the excessive speculation. Speculation implies buying or selling securities to take advantage of price differential at different times. The speculators generally do not take or give delivery and pay or receive full payment. They settle their transactions just by paying the difference in prices.

Normally, speculation is considered a healthy practice and is necessary for successful operation of stock exchange activity. But, when it becomes excessive, it leads to wide fluctuations in prices and various malpractices by the vested interests. In the process, genuine investors suffer and are driven out of the market.

Another shortcoming of stock exchange operations is that security prices may fluctuate due to unpredictable political, social and economic factors as well as on account of rumor’s spread by interested parties. This makes it difficult to assess the movement of prices in future and build appropriate strategies for investment in securities. However, these days good amount of vigilance is exercised by stock exchange authorities and SEBI to control activities at the stock exchange and ensure their healthy functioning.

Secondary market is also called as after market. Stock exchange is the secondary market. The stock exchange is the medium through which the exchange of shares, Equities takes place between the seller and the buyer. Secondary market is the place where most of the trading takes place. The trading of shares and capital in secondary market takes place between the buyer and the seller, company is not involved in transactions. The price of share is decided by demand and supply of the shares and price keeps on fluctuating. In secondary market no new stocks are issued, only trading of stocks is there.

Benefits

Secondary markets are have benefits because they provide liquidity to investors. Buying and selling securities quickly often reduces the amount of value lost on a trade. These markets also allow smaller investors to get involved with trading securities. Many investors don’t initially have access to initial public offerings (IPOs), so secondary markets provide resources for smaller investors. Here’s a list of other ways that illustrate the importance of secondary markets:

• They provide adequate resources for a company’s fair valuation.
• They help indicate the economic health of a country by revealing booms and recessions.
• They drive security prices toward their genuine market value through supply and demand.

Limitations of Secondary Market

• Buying and selling in a secondary market can be time consuming. Investors have to deal with the tedious paperwork involved before completing final transactions.
• The prices of securities in a secondary market are subject to high volatility. Price fluctuations may lead to sudden or unpredictable losses for investors.
• Investors must be careful with their brokerage commissions because they are taxed every time the trade is made. Commissions can have a huge impact on investors and may even dent your profit margin if you’re not paying attention.
• Multiple external factors influence the investments in a secondary capital market thereby subjecting them to high risk. These may lead investors’ existing valuations to change rapidly within seconds.

When a company publicly sells new stocks and bonds for the first time, it does so in the primary capital market. This market is also called the new issues market. In many cases, the new issue takes the form of an initial public offering (IPO). When investors purchase securities on the primary capital market, the company that offers the securities hires an underwriting firm to review it and create a prospectus outlining the price and other details of the securities to be issued.

All issues on the primary market are subject to strict regulation. Companies must file statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other securities agencies and must wait before their filings are approved before they can go public.

Companies that issue securities through the primary capital market may hire investment bankers to obtain commitments from large institutional investors to purchase the securities when first offered. Small investors are often unable to purchase securities at this point because the company and its investment bankers want to sell all of the available securities in a short period of time to meet the required volume, and they must focus on marketing the sale to large investors who can buy more securities at once. Marketing the sale to investors can often include a road show or dog and pony show, in which investment bankers and the company’s leadership travel to meet with potential investors and convince them of the value of the security being issued.

Prices are often volatile in the primary market because demand is often hard to predict when a security is first issued. That’s why a lot of IPOs are set at low prices.

A company can raise more equity in the primary market after entering the secondary market through a rights offering. The company will offer prorated rights based on share investors already own. Another option is a private placement, where a company may sell directly to a large investor such as a hedge fund or a bank. In this case, the shares are not made public.

Benefits / Advantages of Primary Market

1. Mobilization of Saving: Primary market helps in mobilising surplus savings of individuals and others to investment.
2. Channelizing Savings for Productive Use: The funds raised in the primary market are mainly used for expansion, diversification and modernisation purposes of the corporate.
3. Source of Large Supply of Funds: The new issue market is a market for raising long term capital funds from investors who are spread across the country. Thus, large amount of funds can be raised for a longer period.
4. Rapid Industrial Growth: Investment of the surplus saving by the corporate in industrial sector led to increase in production and productivity in the economy.

Disadvantages of Primary Market

Primary market operating in the country is not free from any defects and some of the important defects of the primary market in India are given below.

1. Possibility of Deceiving Investors: The corporate raising money through public issue may not disclose detailed information in the prospectus, in order to deceive investors.
2. No Fixed Norms for Project Appraisal: The projects for which money is raised are to be evaluated in terms of financial, economic, profitability and market feasibility by the project manager. As there are no fixed norms for the appraisal of a project, the evaluation is subject to the personal capability and judgement of the project.
3. Ineffective Role of Merchant Bankers: The merchant bankers perform most of the pre-issue and post issue obligations with regarded to the new issue. But it has

Electronic procurement, also known as e-procurement or supplier exchange, is the process of requisitioning, ordering and purchasing goods and services online. It is a business-to-business process.

Unlike e-commerce, e-procurement utilizes a supplier’s closed system and is only available to registered users. E-procurement facilitates interactions between preferred suppliers and customers through bids, purchase orders and invoices.

E-procurement started in the 1980s, following the development of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). A decade later, improvements in EDI allowed organizations to develop online catalogs for vendors. Today, e-procurement involves everything from supplier evaluation and selection to contract management, electronic orders and payments.

Implementation Steps

Assess Your Current Process

Before you can introduce a new procurement solution, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the current process. Analyse every step of the procurement process, including how long each task takes, the suppliers involved, controlled commodities, payment methods, and compliance checks.

A typical master dataset consists of the following:

• Product and services master catalog: Unique numbering and naming of all routinely procured goods and services. The product naming and nomenclature is made consistent across your entire organization and your business units so that the same item is recorded with the same code and name across every transaction.
• Supplier master directory: Consolidated directory of suppliers across your entire organization. All goods and services in the master catalog should be mapped to the suppliers in a many-to-many relational structure.
• Master category list: List of all categories against which goods and services are classified for reporting and analytics purposes and to support strategic planning and budgeting. All items in the master catalog should be mapped to these categories.
• Organizational structure: A chart representing the breakdown of your organizational structure, specifically aligned to the way your procurement process flows. This helps create a structure against which users can be assigned relevant user roles and permissions, and approval workflows can be created. The organizational structure may include your head office, branch offices and regional locations, business units and departments, discrete functional units and teams, and any other independent procuring unit within your overall procurement organization.
• User directory and permissions: All levels of users of the system such as executives, managers, audit, finance, procurement agents, purchasers, storekeeper, and end-users. Once defined, you can also assign broad permissions and roles and responsibilities for these users. These users should be defined for each organizational entity that you have defined and mapped accordingly.
• Procurement approval workflow and hierarchy definition: For the users defined, approval hierarchies should be defined for use in procurement workflows along with any conditional flows and alternate workflows.
• Historical transactions: Uploading a year of historical data comprising transactions conducted, items procured, and supplier engaged enables you to set a baseline for your future procurement. This ensures that on future purchases of similar items, you have some price history and intelligence to guide your purchase decisions.

Identify any Potential Gaps

Once the assessment is completed, you will have a better understanding of where there’s wasted time, duplicated efforts, lack of visibility, non-compliance or supplier issues and other factors that the new e-procurement system will need to solve.

Think About the Benefits

When a business truly adopts an e-procurement solution and gains 100% user adoption, purchasing compliance increases ten-fold, more spend is brought under management, and goods and services can be negotiated at better prices from strategic suppliers. In addition, e-procurement can:

• Optimise spend by reducing maverick purchases
• Seize discounts by combining orders and purchasing in volume
• Increase overall transaction speed
• Standardise the purchasing experience
• Provide more spend visibility
• Negotiate more favorable contracts with strategic suppliers
• Strengthen supplier relationships
• Safeguard against risk and supply chain disruption
• Alleviates routine tasks so procurement teams can focus on strategic initiatives
• Minimise fraudulent purchases

Choose A Provider

There are many e-procurement providers on the market and initial research may make it feel a little overwhelming. When you begin your search for the perfect e-procurement solution, it’s important to take into consideration all relevant stakeholders’ needs. Make sure you lead with your requirements and understand your budget to ensure both are met. Refer to the procurement section of this source-to-pay checklist for some suggested functionality to review in your demo(s) with each provider and clearly communicate what you’d like to see, so you can fairly evaluate each.

Create An Implementation Plan

Once a solution provider is awarded, you need to develop a plan for the implementation of your e-procurement strategy. Before kicking off the implementation project, it’s important to ensure you have the proper time and resources allocated. To minimise disruption, we suggest establishing key points of contact for each team affected and frequently communicate progress throughout the process.

Analyse

Once the e-procurement solution is in place, you’ll need to monitor performance and analyse results. When doing this, keep in mind the KPIs set out earlier or refer to this eBook for key metrics to watch.

The term “Startup” has gained a lot of popularity these days. More and more individuals are interested in becoming entrepreneurs and therefore open their own business. Therefore, there are also more entities interested in helping new businesses.

A startup is a company established by one or more entrepreneurs to create unique and irreplaceable products or services. It aims at bringing innovation and building ideas quickly.

Nature:

Growth

An startup is company whose goal is grow and expand rapidly, taking up to sometimes drastic proportions. This is one of the points that distinguished startup a Small business.

Age

An startup is new company which is still in early stages brand management, sales and hiring employees. Too often the allocation of this concept to Business who have been on the market for less than 3 years, however, this is not true. That is, one company You can have 7 years and is still a startup.

Innovation

A business this type need to have a differentiator competition in order to gain competitive advantage in the market. It is innovation may be present in their products or in the business model associated with company.

Risk

Once a startup It has shed innovative strongly present, there are always several associated uncertainties about ensuring the success of the business. For this reason, these Business are considered risk investments with a high failure rate.

Solving a problem

Associated with your shed innovative, this Type of company focuses on solving any existing problem in the market. So they focus on making a difference not only in the marketplace but also in people’s lives through your product or service.

Flexibility

A startup is very dynamic and ready to adapt to the adversities that may arise. Due to the need for validation of your business idea, these Business need to be ready to tailor their product to meet customer requirements.

Types:

Small business startups. These businesses are created by regular people and are self-funded. They grow at their own pace and usually have a good site but don’t have an app. Grocery stores, hairdressers, bakers, and travel agents are the perfect examples.

Scalable startups. Companies in a tech niche often belong to this group. Since technology companies often have great potential, they can easily access the global market. Tech businesses can receive financial support from investors and grow into international companies. Examples of such startups include Google, Uber, Facebook, and Twitter. These startups hire the best workers and search for investors to boost the development of their ideas and scale.

Lifestyle startups. People who have hobbies and are eager to work on their passion can create a lifestyle startup. They can make a living by doing what they love. We can see a lot of examples of lifestyle startups. Let’s take dancers, for instance. They actively open online dance schools to teach children and adults to dance and earn money this way.

Big business startups. Large companies have a finite lifespan since customers’ preferences, technologies, and competitors change over time. That’s why businesses should be ready to adapt to new conditions. As a result, they design innovative products that can satisfy the needs of modern customers.

Buyable startups. In the technology and software industry, some people design a startup from scratch to sell it to a bigger company later. Giants like Amazon and Uber buy small startups to develop them over time and receive benefits.

Social startups. These startups exist despite the general belief that the main aim of all startups is to earn money. There are still companies designed to do good for other people, and they are called social startups. Examples include charities and non-profit organizations that exist thanks to donations. For instance, Code.org, a non-profit organization, encourages school students in the US to learn computer science.

Sniffing is the process of monitoring and capturing all the packets passing through a given network using sniffing tools. It is a form of “tapping phone wires” and get to know about the conversation. It is also called wiretapping applied to the computer networks.

There is so much possibility that if a set of enterprise switch ports is open, then one of their employees can sniff the whole traffic of the network. Anyone in the same physical location can plug into the network using Ethernet cable or connect wirelessly to that network and sniff the total traffic.

In other words, Sniffing allows you to see all sorts of traffic, both protected and unprotected. In the right conditions and with the right protocols in place, an attacking party may be able to gather information that can be used for further attacks or to cause other issues for the network or system owner.

Types of Sniffing

Sniffing can be either Active or Passive in nature.

Passive Sniffing

In passive sniffing, the traffic is locked but it is not altered in any way. Passive sniffing allows listening only. It works with Hub devices. On a hub device, the traffic is sent to all the ports. In a network that uses hubs to connect systems, all hosts on the network can see the traffic. Therefore, an attacker can easily capture traffic going through.

The good news is that hubs are almost obsolete nowadays. Most modern networks use switches. Hence, passive sniffing is no more effective.

Active Sniffing

In active sniffing, the traffic is not only locked and monitored, but it may also be altered in some way as determined by the attack. Active sniffing is used to sniff a switch-based network. It involves injecting address resolution packets (ARP) into a target network to flood on the switch content addressable memory (CAM) table. CAM keeps track of which host is connected to which port.

Cyber–Vandalism

The term vandalism describes the deliberate act of damaging or destroying another person or company’s property without their permission. For example, with a computer, hardware vandalism is the act of intentionally breaking or destroying computer hardware. For example, a student could purposely damage a laptop given to them by the school.

Vandalism or cyber-vandalism could include any of the following.

• Intentionally damaging or destroying a digital object.
• Post fake reviews.
• Hacking into and defacing a website.
• Giving bad information on a forum or wiki.
• Posting fake news on a social network.
• Cheating or creating bots to cheat in online gaming.
• Post a virus or other malware for others to download unknowingly.

• Retail and Wholesale

E-commerce has a number of applications in retail and wholesale. E-retailing or on-line retailing is the selling of goods from Business-to-Consumer through electronic storesthat are designed using the electronic catalog and shopping cart model. Cybermall is a single Website that offers different products and services at one Internet location. It attracts the customer and the seller into one virtual space through a Web browser.

• Online marketing and purchasing

Data collection about customer behavior, preferences, needs and buying patterns is possible through Web and E-commerce. This helps marketing activities such as price fixation, negotiation, product feature enhancement and relationship with the customer.

• Manufacturing

E-commerce is also used in the supply chain operations of a company. Some companies form an electronic exchange by providing together buy and sell goods, trade market information and run back office information such as inventory control. This speeds up the flow of raw material and finished goods among the members of the business community. Various issues related to the strategic and competitive issues limit the implementation of the business models.

• Finance

Financial companies are using E-commerce to a large extent. Customers can check the balances of their savings and loan accounts, transfer money to their other account and pay their bill through on-line banking or E-banking. Another application of E-commerce is on-line stock trading. Many Websites provide access to news, charts, information about company profile and analyst rating on the stocks.

On-line banking; issues of transaction costs; Accounting and auditing implications where “intangible” assets and human capital must be tangibly valued in an increasingly knowledge based economy.

• E-Banking

Online banking or E- banking is an electronic payment system that enables customers of a financial institution to conduct financial transactions on a website operated by the institution, Online banking is also referred as internet banking, e-banking, virtual banking and by other terms.

• Production and Operations Management:

The impact of on-line processing has led to reduced cycle times. It takes seconds to deliver digitized products and services electronically; Similarly, the time for processing orders can be reduced by more than 90 per cent from days to

minutes

• Online Auction

Customer-to-Customer E-commerce is direct selling of goods and services among customers. It also includes electronic auctions that involve bidding. Bidding is a special type of auction that allows prospective buyers to bid for an item.

• Online publishing

Electronic publishing (also referred to as e-publishing or digital publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogs.

• Online booking (Ticket, Seat.etc)

An Internet booking engine (IBE) is an application which helps the travel and tourism industry support reservation through the Internet. It helps consumers to book flights, hotels, holiday packages, insurance and other services online. This is a much-needed application for the aviation industry as it has become one of the fastest growing sales channels.

• Human Resource Management:

Issues of on-line recruiting, home working and “intra-pruners” working on a project by project basis replacing permanent employees.

• Business Law and Ethics:

The different legal and ethical issues that have arisen as a result of a global “Virtual” market. Issues are copyright laws, privacy of customer information, and legality of electronic contracts.