Mobile devices and aided services: the breeding ground for internet commerce

The dominant influence of mobile devices

Portability and easy accessibility to uncountable number of facilities and services is the primary reason for an exponential rise of mobile devices. With its advent, features such as Mobile Commerce have emerged to be the face of E-commerce in present times. Devices are becoming more powerful with multiple features and capabilities. This created new possibilities in E-commerce market, making it more amicable for users. Mobile Commerce is the recent materialization of this same facet. Increasing accessibility of internet via portable devices is the most relevant reason for emergence of m-commerce in the marketplace. For mobile service providers, only voice call service no longer remains to be the selling proposition. Extensive internet services and plans have become the next prominent products for these providers. Cell phones are now transformed into Smart phones with greater number of features and powerful capabilities. These devices apart from providing strong browsing platforms can run powerful applications serving as the only gateways to internet business and transactions. Thus, mobile devices along with aided services have become the breeding ground for internet commerce. As these devices penetrate the market, they have also emerged as the largest platforms for sales and business for online retailers and service providers. The trend is global and markets in countries such as India are the ones contributing largely.

Apart from using direct systems of cash transfer such as credit and debit cards, money transfer is now made possible via mobile handsets. With this service, customers can use their mobile phone to make payments for goods and services in online platforms. NFC, Near Field Communication, is one of the effective techniques that helped transactions via mobiles.  However, according to recent news, this has not been able to compete with the alternatives such as Apple's payment services. Furthermore, this technology is difficult to integrate with handsets as well as, so it is not welcomed to the fullest by many retailers. Mobile applications are the next trendsetters to this market. These apps are powerful ways to provide better services to customers. Apps are connected to the internet and they serve as a gateway to retail outlets. Through them, it is possible to get complete access to websites and retailers.

M-commerce is integrated to finance and banking sector. The industry is about digital channels being used a payment gateways. This being the primary aspect of the industry, technical trends and business platforms such as big data, modeling, forecast, mobile application and digital marketing have come up to be on mainstream. These are also the areas, where requirement of talent within the industry is growing rapidly. With exponential growth of the industry, talent acquisition and demand of skilled workforce emerged to be a pertinent issue. As Mobile Commerce industry is growing in diverse set of paradigms, the requirement of skills is diversified. Skill sets such as technology and coding, analytics skills, project management are highly on demand in this industry.

Skill shortage in M-Commerce sector

Shortage of skills in the emerging Mobile Commerce marketplace is becoming an issue. In such as backdrop, talent sourcing turns critical. The general course that companies take in such situation is pooling out talent from other industries. Skilled workforce for trades such as application development and digital marketing can be assembled from IT and marketing sectors, but for more imperative field such as big data, such an approach is futile. In hiring talent for M-commerce industry, banks and financial institutions can play a significant role. As payment systems play a crucial role in this industry, required skills are related to traditional banking and payment methods, both conventional and modern ones. Integration to banking system is central for m-commerce and hence payment and finance skills are essential for the industry. Training of employees has become imperative for companies in the industry. The pace at which the industry is developing has made institutes and colleges unable to deliver industry-oriented education. Hence, companies within this sector are required to invest in skill development on their own.

M-commerce sector- a job generator

Emergence of m-commerce has brought a number of new opportunities in the market along with new technologies and business amenities such as Mobile POS, Contactless payment, HCE, NFC based payments and so on. Such aspects have created many new job profiles in the industry. Study suggests that the industry will generate a plethora of new jobs in next couple of years. In addition to core technical profiles, jobs will be created in several additional domains such as detection and prevention of fraud and advanced analytics. Common profiles such as product management and technical skills are ample in this industry. According to sources, United States is ahead of others to reach out for the mobile commerce marketplace. This market is also expected to grow rapidly in North America and other countries. According to estimation, within next four years, 32% of all payments would be done via this channel. This new platform is gaining popularity because of easy accessibility of features. It just matches with its easy definition of "a retail outlet in your customer's pocket."

Keeping all the factors in mind, mobile commerce is likely to be a game changer and experts opine that the market would contribute up to 70 per cent of their total revenues. E-commerce companies will tailor their sites for mobile devices and improve customer experiences accordingly. Shopping online through Smart phones has gained traction and industry experts believe that m-commerce is likely to contribute up to 70 per cent of total revenues of online retailers.

This above views have been expressed by Rajiv Kumar, CEO & Founder, Hippo Innovations in Business Manager magazine in September 2015 issue.
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