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Electronic Business,
commonly referred to as "eBusiness" or "e-Business", may be defined as the
utilizationof information and communication technologies (ICT) in support of all
the activities of business.Commerce constitutes the exchange of products and
services between businesses, groups and ndividuals and hence can be seen as one
of the essential activities of any business. Hence, electronic ommerce or
eCommerce focuses on the use of ICT to enable the external activities and
relationships of the usiness with individuals, groups and other businesses
[1].Louis Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, in his ook, Who Says Elephants Can't
Dance? attributes the term "e-Business" to IBM's marketing and Internet teams in
996.Electronic business methods enable companies to link their internal and
external data processing systemsmore efficiently and flexibly, to work more
closely with suppliers and partners, and to better atisfy the needs and
expectations of their customers.In practice, e-business is more than just
e-commerce. While -business refers to more strategic focus with an emphasis on
the functions that occur using electronic apabilities, e-commerce is a subset of
an overall e-business strategy. E-commerce seeks to add revenuestreams using the
World Wide Web or the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients
andpartners and to improve efficiency using the Empty Vessel strategy. Often,
e-commerce involves theapplication of knowledge management systems.E-business
involves business processes spanning the entirevalue chain: electronic
purchasing and supply chain management, processing orders
electronically,handling customer service, and cooperating with business
partners. Special technical tandards for e-business facilitate the exchange of
data between companies. E-business software solutions allow the ntegration of
intra and inter firm business processes. E-business can be conducted using the
Web, the nternet, intranets, extranets, or some combination of these.