E-Business

August 21, 2008

As the popularity of internet grew and people became aware of its power, the concept of eBusiness was developed.

Electronic Business or eBusiness or e-Business may be defined as “utilization of information and communication technologies to support all the activities of any business”. This term was first introduced by IBM in 1996 in their marketing effort.

E-commerce only deals with earning revenue using the Internet by building and enhancing relationship with clients. It may be considered as a subset of eBusiness. Electronic Business is involved with all aspects of doing business which would include electronic purchasing and managing the supply chain, electronically processing the clients’ orders, providing customer services and cooperating with other business associates.

Exchange of data between different companies is possible in eBusiness by using special technical standards. E-business software applications integrate business processes both within the company and with other companies.

While developing eBusiness, different business models are used. A business model is defined as “the organization of product, service and information flows, and source of revenue and benefits for suppliers and customers”. To develop eBusiness, the concept of business model is used in the context of online processing.

A list of some of the business models used in eBusiness is given below:

Ø      E-shops

Ø      E-procurement

Ø      E-malls

Ø      E-auctions

Again, eBusiness is classified according to provider/producers and consumer/clients involved in business transactions involved. Some of these classifications are given below:

Ø      Business-to-business (B2B)

Ø      Business-to-consumer (B2C)

Ø      Business-to-employee (B2E)

Ø      Business-to-government (B2G)

Ø      Government-to-business (G2B)

Ø      Consumer-to-consumer (C2C)

Ø      Consumer-to-business (C2b)

E-Business is all about using technology to improve the business processes of your organization. It is involved with the internal processes of the organization like human resources, financial accounting and administration as well as external processes like sales and marketing, supplying good and services and customer relations.

Some of the activities which are conducted using eBusiness tools are:

Ø      Trading of goods and services like eProcurement using internet

Ø      Electronic retailing (eTailing)

Ø      Conducting research and managing business activities using Internet, Intranets or Extranets

Ø      Web site marketing

Ø      Online communication like eMail

Ø      Online training for employees (eLearning)

E-Business should not be considered only as a Website. By using the tools used in eBusiness, your business would become more efficient by following activities:

Ø      Accessing Internet to gather information regarding your industry, your suppliers and products as well as for general research.

Ø      Streamlining some of the activities into electronic transactions which were previously carried out manually.  A few examples could be online banking, financial management.

Ø      Customer relationship management by integrating front office and back office operations.

Application of eBusiness tools would help you streamline your business processes and help you find new market for your products. Therefore, you should now seriously think of using eBusiness tools in your company for its growth.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 5:55 am and is filed under E-Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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