Tales of two ‘netrepreneurs’: From crude to cool

“Crude” could probably describe the old way of doing business over the Internet: very static, hand-coded web pages, where one could even be confronted by dead links on an unlucky day.

Dustin Andaya of Islandrose.net, the website of the largest local rose supplier Philippine Cut Flower Corporation (PCFC), found several reasons to say “crude.” Coming from abroad six years ago to manage the 25-year-old family-owned company, he thought e-commerce in the Philippines was still a hazy, if not non-existent, concept. “If there was e-commerce then, it would be the entrepreneurs delivering with their own cars, covering very limited areas,” he said.

Riding the e-train

To fully brandish the online technology weapon, Mr. Andaya had to put pressure on his suppliers and couriers to prove a point: that e-commerce could speed up his business.

“I can’t have someone who don’t know how to answer an e-mail or browse the Internet,” he said. “So it was quite a strain because it’s like moving our farm to the city, and our wholesalers weren’t used to what we call ‘customer service’.”

Island Rose started delivering bouquets, harmony wreaths and gift items to anywhere in the Philippines through the Net, with prices inclusive of fixed shipping rate and VAT. Its online basket also brims with reward points and discounts for Island Rose members.

And true to the borderless terrains offered by the Net, it was not only flower suppliers that responded to the clarion call of e-commerce. Medicard Philippines found the same need to establish an online presence.

“It was in 2001 when we formulated a new IT plan, and our design was really to digitize everything,” Medicard’s assistant vice-president for information technology Lorena Benipayo said.

Medicard developed all back-office systems before fortifying its e-commerce strategy. Now, all prospective individual and family clients have to do is visit the site, fill out an online application form, and the accomplished forms will be directed automatically to its underwriting department.

Going Kaban, too

Part of these companies’ virtual visions is peddling their wares online with a payment system that would strike a responsive chord with their market.

Both have partnered with Yehey.com’s Kaban Internet Payments  (www.kaban.com.ph), an online payment gateway system that enables SMEs to accept customer payment through ATM, credit card or electronic cash modes such as Globe GCash.

“We were like a guinea pig for PayPlus,” island Rose’s Mr. Andaya said, referring to Yehey.com’s service that preceded the newly reengineered Kaban payment system. “And I’ve always worked well with Yehey! It’s secure, and I know their website delivers many hits,” he said.

Yehey!’s attraction to online vendors like Island Rose and Medicard is its over 30 million page views a month and nearly 300,000 registered users, ranking among the top three most-viewed websites in the country.

Benipayo said the “very minimal set-up fee” led Medicard towards Kaban. “Unlike other payment systems where we have to maintain a minimum balance, in Kaban we don’t have to pass on the cost to our online buyers,” she said.