Electronic Business

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia says:

Electronic Business, commonly referred to as "eBusiness" or "e-Business", may be defined as the utilization of 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 individuals and hence can be seen as one of the essential activities of any business. Hence, electronic commerce or eCommerce focuses on the use of ICT to enable the external activities and relationships of the business with individuals, groups and other businesses.

Louis Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, in his book, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? attributes the term "e-Business" to IBM's marketing and Internet teams in 1996.

Electronic business methods enable companies to link their internal and external data processing systems more efficiently and flexibly, to work more closely with suppliers and partners, and to better satisfy the needs and expectations of their customers.

In practice, e-business is more than just e-commerce. While e-business refers to more strategic focus with an emphasis on the functions that occur using electronic capabilities, e-commerce is a subset of an overall e-business strategy. E-commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the World Wide Web or the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients and partners and to improve efficiency using the Empty Vessel strategy. Often, e-commerce involves the application of knowledge management systems.

E-business involves business processes spanning the entire value chain: electronic purchasing and supply chain management, processing orders electronically, handling customer service, and cooperating with business partners. Special technical standards for e-business facilitate the exchange of data between companies. E-business software solutions allow the integration of intra and inter firm business processes. E-business can be conducted using the Web, the Internet, intranets, extranets, or some combination of these.

Read the entire Wikipedia article.

This seems in some ways a little dated now. With all the attention given to website marketing and internet marketing and promotion, that every business worth being called a business has a website and is therefore an ebusiness. I've known some entrepreneurs who spurn the internet. They say, "I just don't want to be that dependent on a computer." The thing is, it's the computer that shall set you free. I think now more than ever before the risk to an ebusiness is to have too much demand too soon. These people aren't really sincere about business anyway. They're basically hobbyists.

What do you think about this? I'd like to know. Also Google it. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.