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WHAT IS eBUSINESS? There is no universally accepted definition of eBusiness. It embraces all aspects of buying and selling products and services over a network. The essential characteristics of eBusiness are that the dealings between two parties, be it business to consumer or business to business, are online transactions, and that the key commodity being traded is information. In effect, we see eBusiness as the gateway to a deal - it is a transaction that may, but doesn't necessarily have to, lead to the delivery of a physical product. There are several commonly used names for eBusiness, the most popular being eCommerce and eTrade. Some of the more academic treatises attempt to distinguish the terms (for instance, eCommerce is sometimes limited to the buying and selling of goods and the flows of associated information and funds; eTrade can be viewed as covering only supplier to supplier transactions). Whichever term is used there is a clear differentiation between the 'e' and the 'business', 'commerce' or 'trading'. The former is a question of technical capability, the latter the way in which that capability is applied. Put them together and you end up with something more than the sum of their combined parts. New possibilities and requirements emerge. Therefore, the focus of the emerging world of eBusiness will be on: Technical aspects-the hardware, software and networks that are needed to connect a community of interest and allow them to share information. This also covers the design and presentation of that information. An important part of eBusiness technology is the specialised software used for payments (billing, charging, invoicing, account management), security (authorisation, authentication, privacy, data integrity and audit) and service support (problem management, configuration control and order handling). Business model - how businesses interwork, and how this influences the way in which they are established and the way in which technology is deployed. In this respect, we examine the typical flow of orders, fulfilment and payments, how various players co-operate to provide an end product or service to the consumer, and the various ways in which a virtual market is established. The diagram above gives some idea of how the key elements fit together. It should be said that the perspective is intended to be general, and should fit business-to-business trade as well as the case where individual consumers interact with an online business. So you can 'daisy chain' the picture, such that someone who takes the role of supplier to one set of customers may also take the role of customer to a different supplier further back in the chain. In any case, they all have to be on a shared network, work from the same catalogue, have some means of delivering goods, and be able to settle up after the transaction. THE WHISTLE-STOP TOUR So far, eBusiness has been described in broad terms as a mass-market capability that is enabled by a combination of the Internet's global reach and the vast resources of traditional Information Technology (IT). Given this, it should come as no surprise that it is a multi-faceted beast (or, potentially, a many-headed monster!). Many of those facets are technical, but others are not. To get a grasp on the overall scope and nature of the eBusiness proposition, this section looks at the constituent parts of trading over a network. The marketplace Before we think about business, we should first think about the market where that business is conducted. So, what is an electronic market? It can be viewed as a direct parallel of the familiar shop, store or emporium. It is, in essence, a virtual trading area where deals are struck over a network. The 'shop-front' is the computer and the server is the warehouse. In fact, there is an electronic analogue of virtually all of the items you'd find in a conventional market-including bogus traders, inferior goods and dubious bargains. EShops The electronic shop can be thought of as the 'look and feel' of the screen that fronts the customer. Just as with high street stores, the aim is to entice the customer to browse and, ultimately, to buy. Although unlikely to supplant real-world shops, the online variety can provide features that seem likely to promote their growth.
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