Posted on 28 Apr 2015
Big companies with strong
brick-and-mortar bases are getting more serious about investing in e-commerce
platforms, getting prepared for a future digital war when everything will be
available online.
“We don’t want to be left behind. We are investing in information technology,
both in the facilities and human resources,” Panorama Group president director
Budi Tirtawisata said when asked about his company’s stance on digital sales.
The group had invested millions of dollars to develop its online platform over
the last four to five years, he estimated.
The publicly listed tour and travel group, whose official name is PT Panorama
Sentrawisata, currently owns various online retail sites, including tour
website panorama-tours.com, hotel booking site rajakamar.com and
daily deal site travelicious.com.
Budi said recently that with many more people having access to the Internet,
revenue contributions from online sales would likely leapfrog to between 40 and
50 percent in the near future from around 10 percent at present.
Around one third of the country’s 250 million population are now connected to
the Internet and the ratio is forecast to climb to over 50 percent of the
population by 2017.
Panorama’s gross revenues climbed by 30 percent to Rp 3.45 trillion (US$265.7
million) last year from Rp 2.64 trillion in 2013.
Also joining the fray in the “borderless” market, garment manufacturer and
fashion retailer PT Trisula International has committed to dedicating some
investments toward developing its online shops.
“In the long run, we want to spend around Rp 5 billion for e-commerce and
advertisements,” said Trisula president director Lisa Tjahjadi.
The publicly listed company had already spent around Rp 1.2 billion to set up
online stores and to advertise, she said.
Trisula has made a number of its products, including Bonds, Jobb, G2000 and
Jack Nicklaus, available online.
Lisa said that Trisula’s online sales had surged more than 100 percent each
month as it was quite new and that the country’s e-commerce market kept
growing.
Indonesia’s e-commerce market is estimated to have a total value of Rp 295
trillion next year, a huge increase from Rp 94.5 trillion in 2013, according to
the Indonesian E-Commerce Association (idEA).
The government, meanwhile, has previously stated that it aims to see e-commerce
make up around 8 percent of the country’s total retail business.
On another occasion, a professor with the IMD Business School, Donald A.
Marchand, said there was no reason for any company to not start going digital
as the digital technology shift was happening in every single industry.
“In every industry, there are leaders in digital space who are experimenting
and innovating in their business models and there are laggards and followers.
[…] if you want to be leaders then you have to recognize who’s out there, doing
innovation in your industry that could lead to more advantages,” he told The
Jakarta Post.
At present, industry giants like Panorama and Trisula will not only compete
with their offline peers, but also with digital natives like ticket-booking
site Traveloka.com and online store and marketplace lazada.co.id.
