Managing E-Business - Concepts and Cases

Keywords

e-business, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IT expenditures, HRMS, Xerox PeopleNet, Dell.com, TVS eShop, AutoXchange, Covisint, CarPoint

Links

Free Resources,
Articles,
Book Reviews,
Interviews

Tools

Organizations today face major challenges of constantly reducing their costs, introducing new and innovative products on a regular basis and satisfying increasing customer demands. Customers are demanding lower prices, more product options and customization, improved level of services and personalized treatment. To meet all these challenges, the top management at most organizations is examining their enterprises operations in the context of e-business opportunities.

Till recently, e-business had been narrowly viewed by most organizations as establishing a website to offer more information about the company and its products. The maximum efforts made by organizations were to develop the website into just another marketing and sales channel. However, e-business has a much broader scope. It involves digitization of an organization's internal business processes as well as its external interfaces with customers, suppliers and partners. E-Business is about transforming an organization for the information age where value is created by effectively managing intangible assets rather than just physical assets. It offers significant potential to transform companies by creating new value chains and business processes or redesigning existing ones.

The top management at most corporates is now recognizing that e-business is one of the biggest transitions for businesses. They are worried that if they do not handle this transition in the right manner, it could mean losing significant business in the short term or even going out of business in the longer term. To manage this e-business transition successfully, requires developing effective e-business strategies by the top management including the three 'Os' (CEOs, CIOs and CFOs) of all organizations.

Divided into four sections, this book provides insights on how both new as well as established brick and mortar organizations, by following a systematic approach can transform their business into e-business. It focuses on a wide range of issues including understanding the true scope of e-business, defining the evolutionary path for e-business initiatives and formulating e-business strategies. The book also provides detailed perspectives about the present and emerging e-business technologies and their benefits to brick and mortar organizations. Finally, the book covers case studies on how leading corporations have implemented e-business strategies.

E-Strategies - An Introduction

Though e-business offers several benefits to companies, there is a lot brick and mortar organizations need to be aware of before they invest in any e-business initiatives. In the late 1990s, many organizations during the dotcom boom era had made significant investments in e-business without understanding the consumer and economic implications of their decisions. In the majority of cases, these investments had realized negligible returns.

Traditional brick and mortar organizations must seriously consider about the impact of embracing e-business on their existing business. Before venturing into e-business companies must analyze the key opportunities offered by it. This section will provide an understanding about the need for embracing e-business. It will also provide insights on how to test the relevance of any e-business initiative.

Next >>