E-commerce and
e-business are not solely the Internet, websites or dot com companies. It is
about a new business concept that incorporates all previous business management
and economic concepts. As such, e-business and e-commerce impact on many areas
of business and disciplines of business management studies. For example:
Marketing – issues of on-line advertising, marketing strategies and consumer behavior and cultures. One of the areas in which it impacts
particularly is direct marketing. In the past this was mainly door-to- door,
home parties (like the Tupperware parties) and mail order using catalogs or
leaf lets. This moved to telemarketing and TV selling with the advances in
telephone and television technology and finally developed into e-marketing
spawning ‘eCRM’ (customer relationship management) data mining and the like by
creating new channels for direct sales and promotion.
Computer sciences –
development of different network and computing technologies and
languages to support e-commerce and e-business, for example linking front and
back office legacy systems with the ‘web- based’ technology.
Finance and accounting –
on-line banking; issues of transaction costs; accounting and
auditing implications where ‘intangible’ assets and human capital must be
tangibly valued in an increasingly knowledge based economy.
Economics –
the impact of e-commerce on local and global economies;
understanding the concepts of a digital and knowledge-based economy and how
this fits into economic theory.
Production and
operations management – the impact of on-line processing has
led to reduced cycle times. It takes seconds to deliver digitized products and
services electronically; similarly the time for processing orders can be
reduced by more than 90 per cent from days to minutes. Production systems are
integrated with finance marketing and other functional systems as well as with
business partners and customers Cutting production
cycle times by up to 50 per cent, especially when manufacturing plants,
engineers and designers are located in different countries. In sub-assembler
companies, where a product is assembled from a number of different components
sourced from a number of manufacturers, communication, collaboration and
coordination are critical – so electronic bidding can yield cheaper components
and having flexible and adaptable procurement systems allows fast changes at a
minimum cost so inventories can be minimized and money saved.
Management information systems – analysis, design and implementation of e-business systems within an organization; issues of
integration of front-end and back-end systems.
Human resource management – issues of on-line recruiting, home working and ‘intrapreneurs’ working on a project by project basis
replacing permanent employees.
Business law and ethics – the different legal and ethical issues that have arisen as a result of a global ‘virtual’ market. Issues such as
copyright laws, privacy of customer information, legality of electronic
contracts, etc.
