At its most basic level,
e-business means building the links between companies and their
customers and suppliers... connecting departments, customers
and locations. It involves taking processes currently functioning
within a business and moving them to networks and shared
applications. But taken further, e-business is a holistic,
integrated, strategy-driven undertaking. It demands that enterprises
examine, and probably change the way they perform basic business
functions: sales, marketing, customer service, purchasing,
operations, overseas initiatives, human resources, finance, and, of
course, IT.
Internet-based B2B
e-commerce promises a new era of Low-entry cost, Larger and more
inclusive trading communities, increased functionality and more
comprehensive automation of the business cycle This shift in
mind-share away from EDI and towards Internet-based B2B e-commerce
has been sparked by the successful market entry of a number of
application developers and Larger IT solutions and services
companies who wish to embrace the 'e-commerce' ethos with their own
brands.
When e-business
is embraced as a fundamental corporate philosophy it can serve as
the mechanism for economic transformation - redefining business
models, changing corporate cultures, injecting intimacy into
relationships with customers and suppliers, and, ultimately,
altering the competitive dynamics of entire industries and the
companies that lie within. |
