Acuscan

Table of Contents

1- Abstract

2- About E-Business

3- Advantages and Disadvantages

4- The impact if e-business on a typical business

5- What a company must do to transform its strategy when it decides to transform into e-business

6- Conclusion

7- References

Abstract

There is a misconception that e-Business simply means buying and selling products and services over the Internet. The broader view of e-Business focuses on the key processes that directly enhance revenue -- namely, customer acquisition and retention through sales, marketing and service (Siebel, 2004). This customer-centric view of e-Business is not limited to the Internet but rather applies to all aspects of the customer relationship whether it is online or offline.

Week One Related Article: E-Business

To understand e-business, it is defined as the processes and tools that allow an organization to use Internet-based technologies and infrastructure, both internally and externally, to conduct day-to-day business process operations (Cylogy.com, 2005). Furthermore, e-Business is also using technology to improve your business processes. This includes managing internal processes such as human resources, financial and administration systems as well as external processes such as sales and marketing, supply of goods and services and customer relationships.

Additionally, e-Business is more than having a Website for your business. Using e-Business tools can make your administrative and operational activities more efficient through accessing the Internet to source information about your industry, suppliers and products and for general research. Also, one can streamline the traditional physical transactions into electronic transactions; human resources management, through the development of an Intranet for news, policies, staff movements and enabling staff to apply for leave and access their personnel information online, etc.

However, there are also the advantages and disadvantages to every good thing. When it comes to e-business, the advantages may include being able to use applications and features such as email, which is great because it is a quick and cheap way of sending information, combined with the ability to attach files and send them onto another user. E-business is also quicker and easier means of communications; it may strengthen marketing capabilities and reach. Finally, it may also reduce the cost of doing business by lowering transaction costs and increasing efficient methods for payment, such as using online banking and reducing stationery and postage costs.

Despite having many advantages of the Internet, there are, unfortunately disadvantages as well in e-business. For example, Viruses are often spread over the Internet, which can normally be done via email. Even having a virus scanner does not protect your computer system at one hundred percent because they do not always recognize new virus, which it does not yet know about. Other disadvantages may include hackers being able to access your system and therefore, all of the company's files, which could ruin the company's business, may be at large. There is also one of the biggest complaints, which is the lack of physical contact because it prevents scrutiny of products and lacks face-to-face interaction; there may be difficulty in finding information;

Nonetheless, what is the impact of e-business on a typical business? According to DeLong (2000), at the end of the 1950s, when electronic computers had largely replaced electromechanical calculators, there were roughly 2000 installed computers in the world. These were machines like Remington Rand UNIVACs, IBM 650s or 702s, or DEC PDP-1s. Their processing power averaged perhaps 10,000 instructions per second. Today, forty years later, we are talking orders of magnitude only here there are approximately 200 million active computers in the world with processing power that averages approximately 100,000,000 instructions per second.

This is a million-fold increase in forty years. This leaves to one side the accompanying improvements in data storage and data communications technologies that are of equal magnitude. As a result, the real impact of e-business on a typical business is that it has many advantages as well as disadvantages but the fact is that larger businesses, universities and governments can survive e-business failures but smaller businesses cannot afford them at all.

Most of the time, businesses undergo different types of transformation such as reconstruction, reengineering, complete new system change. However, when a company wants to transform into e-business, that company should first look at different types of e-business strategies. Some company's only want to leverage the Internet to enhance existing processes. Others have a need for broad changes, modifying existing strategy to embed e-business. Finally, some companies want to build a new company from scratch based on e-business capabilities. This final option may involve creating a separate e-business or reinventing the existing company (Green, 2004).

Companies should undertake the following twelve steps in developing their strategic plan for corporate e-business transformation.

Step 1 -- Define Business Processes

"The key objective is to identify the major business processes that make up your organization. In identifying these business processes, it is important to note the flows of information between business processes and, as clearly as possible, to identify the boundaries between the business processes".

Step 2 -- Survey Trading Partners

"An attempt to digitally transform business processes without the direct input of customers and other key trading partners, preferably with their active involvement at key points, is doomed to failure. Without this input, companies risk an ivory tower solution that may sound valid in a planning

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