Tuesday, January
9, 2001
Consumers Will Not Embrase eSignature Technology
Meridien Research, a leading financial industry technology
analyst firm, released today a brief describing the strategic
issues facing financial services institutions with the
enactment of the Electronic Signatures in National and
Global Commerce Act.
According to Meridien, external customer electronic signature
use will begin no earlier than 2002, and widespread customer
use of digital signatures in financial transactions appears
to be several years away. They suggest that inconsistent
implementation across solutions, differing processes across
financial institutions and transaction types, will likely
keep consumers from using e-signatures in financial transactions
in the near term.
“The immediate impact of e-signature technology
will occur in business-to-business or internal applications
where employees, departments, and partners use digital
signatures and certificates in a closed, limited-user environment,” said
Tom Richards, Research Director at Meridien. “Implementations
in less complex transaction processes and environments
where economies of scale can be realized will be first.
It will be a while before consumers may see a benefit in
closing a loan at an ATM or at their PC.”
Meridien’s brief, entitled “The Case of the
Invisible Ink: E-Signatures”, illustrates the impacts
of e-signature legislation, describes the value of an e-signature
solution implementation, lists examples of vendor solutions
available in the marketplace, and identifies which financial
services institutions may benefit most from integrating
an e-signature solution into their customer relationship
management strategy.
B2B eCommerce Revenues Will Triple This Year
Website executives who took part in ActivMedia Research's
annual scan of online revenues think 2002 will be the
year B-to-B E-Commerce revenues surpasses online retailers
selling direct to consumers. Based upon the data collected
in the study, B-to-B revenues online will triple in 2001
to reach $263 billion.
Today more than half of all B-to-B websites (55%) attempt
to generate sales indirectly from their sites, as a result
of marketing but not active sales at the site. One-third
(32%) actually generate sales directly at the site and
the remainder (13%) make no attempt to sell at their primary
site.
How B-to-B Web marketers intend to use their
websites may be shifting. Firms that have been online the
longest
are most likely to attempt to generate sales indirectly,
as are firms that are younger. However, significantly more
2-year-old B-to-B sites are going the indirect-sales route.
Very few of these firms are selling direct. In contrast,
twice as many one-year-old and three-plus year-old firms
are selling direct.
Web managers of business-to-business
sites allot half their total site-design and operational
budgets to site development
on an ongoing basis. Average site-development costs
of B-to-B sites triple between the first and second years
of operation, then subside in later years as online
business
designs stabilize, allowing companies to capitalize
on their early years' investments.
News Tidbits (appears every day on the front page)
- Kozmo.com is letting go 120 employees, saying on its
site that "demand didn't match staffing and inventory
requirements to maintain service."
