Electronic business

From ArticleWorld

Electronic business also known as e-business is in fact any business activity conducted using electronic information technology.

Description

Electronic business or e-business is not confined just to e-commerce for it includes all the processes along the supply chain from the basic electronic purchase (known as e-procurement) going through processing orders, cooperation with existing partners and technical support. The term of e-business was invented by the famous CEO Lou Gerstner, who worked at IBM. Although the main way of conducting e-business is through the world wide web, it is not restricted to it. The internal services ran through intranet or the custom designed, more secured, extranets are also used for electronic business. The main standards used in e-business are EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) and the new emerging Rosetta Net, along many other de facto established protocols.

E-business anatomy

Given the fact that e-business can be split among various, separate processes, this chapter provides a clear list of what each process involves:

1. The internal business system reffers to the electronic means used internally in a company for a more efficient service. The methods used are: knowledge management, employee information portals, internal transaction processing, resource planning, document and workflow management, human resources and as a visible front end the customer relationship management.
2. Electronic collaboration and communication. These are used to keep a healthy relation with the existing customers. The methods used to accomplish this task are: e-mail, voice communication (including conferecing), chat and forum systems, any other collaborative system imaginable and as a backend the content management system.
3. The most important part of electronic business is of course the e-commerce. This can be either business to business or business to customer. The e-commerce involves all the visible parts of the selling network which go in the following order: online marketing or e-marketing, online transaction and electronic funds transfer and finally as a cornerstone the supply chain management itself.