Sector Report on E-Business

E-business

Executive summary

Since the last decade, the internet sector has become a prosperous industry. A variety of internet applications aroused, including e-business. Among others, e-business aims at optimizing business processes, with the support of internet technologies. In this paper we analyse whether this industry is sufficiently efficient and value added, for small and medium sized enterprises, to invest in. By evaluating the opportunities, e-business offers a spectrum of non-discovered possibilities within a company’s business units. For example, new marketing tools such as online advertising show up. This new type of advertising ensures the reach of a wide audience with a considerable lower cost. Not only marketing, but sales as well, have become more efficient, as products can be acquired online. E-commerce either, implies accurate data processing, a better customer service and an elimination of intermediaries, which often implies lower prices. Another vast impact of e-business is business process integration. This is accomplished by a harmonization of activities inside and outside the company. All these opportunities of e-business go together with many advantages such as: cost & time reduction and quality improvement. The merging of cost cutting and quality improvement leads to a higher business performance, more efficiency and a higher productivity, which are the core elements of any enterprise. However, it should be clear that e-business does not only involve successful implementations. Several critical success factors are indispensable in order to generate significant increase in revenues trough e-business. These factors include adjustments of the management, monitoring costs, a transformation of the corporate culture & structure and an adaption of technology. When these elementary components are taken into account, a firm should be able to see significant gains with few impediments.

Table of contents

1. Introduction 4
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