Investigate and Design E-business Solution

Electronic business is any kind of business or commercial transaction that includes sharing
information across the internet. 
E-commerce describes any part of the business processes associated with online ordering and
purchasing. An e-commerce transaction, for example, would be a customer ordering online and
picking up the product at the brick-and-mortar store.
E-business or Online business means business transactions that take place online with the help
of the internet. The term e-business came into existence in the year 1996. E-business is an
abbreviation for electronic business. So the buyer and the seller don't meet personally.
E-Business helps students understand the fundamentals of conducting business over the Internet
and the concepts involved in providing excellent service to customers. The book discusses how
managers can improve the efficiency of their business processes and make an e-business venture
successful.
The core components of e-business are information, communication, and transaction.

Lo-1 E-Business Opportunities.

Many organizations are creating opportunities by conducting business in the cloud. But for some
traditional businesses, the idea of e-business can be daunting.

First, it pays to understand the difference between e-commerce and e-business.

E-commerce is largely transactions using open networks. It usually relates to consumer

commerce over the web, such as buying a book online.

E-business, on the other hand, relates to the use of information networks to gain a competitive
advantage and is much more than just having a website for your business. It is often used to
describe the use of technology to improve your business processes. The term e-business can also
relate to a business that is run on the internet or uses internet technologies to improve its
productivity or profitability. Business in the cloud, or cloud computing, relates to resources that
are accessed over the internet, rather than on a server.

The use of e-business tools can make your administrative and operational activities more efficient
through:
 Accessing the internet to source information about your industry, suppliers, and products
 Streamlining your physical transactions into electronic transactions, for example, online banking,
financial management, and stock control
 Human resources management, through the development of an intranet for news, policies and
staff administrative functions
 Customer relationship management
 Using appropriate project management software
How is e-business different to a traditional business?
Traditional businesses usually grow organically and develop step by step. They usually have
clear definitions and deal with little change in the business environment. On the other hand, the
e-business journey is less predictable thanks to ongoing change in the business and technology
environment. Time to market and speed are major competitive factors in e-business, which
demands fast adaption. E-business tools can be used:
 To trade goods and services online
 To conduct electronic retailing (e-tailing)
 To create intranets or extranets to conduct research and manage business activities
 For website marketing and online communications such as email
 As online training for staff (e-learning)
E-business opportunities
The most common implementation of e-business is as an additional, or in some cases primary,
storefront. By selling products and services online, an e-business is able to reach a much wider
consumer base than any traditional brick-and-mortar store could ever do.
An e-business may also use the internet to acquire wholesale products or supplies for in-house
production. This facet of e-business is sometimes referred to as e-procurement and allows
businesses to cut their costs dramatically. Even many e-businesses that operate without an
electronic storefront use e-procurement as a way to better track and manage their purchasing.
More e-business opportunities
In addition to buying and selling products, an e-business may also handle other traditional business
aspects. The use of electronic chat as a form of technical and customer support is an excellent
example of this. Many e-businesses use chat to supplement their traditional phone support. This saves
them incredible amounts of time while providing opportunities unavailable through traditional
support.
By using virtual computer systems, for example, technical support operators can remotely access a
customer’s computer and assist them in correcting a problem.
Using email and private websites as a method for dispensing internal memos and white sheets is
another use of the internet by e-business. Rather than producing time-intensive and costly physical
copies for each employee, a central server or email list can serve as an efficient method for
distributing necessary information.
Remember, e-business is a business, not a technical decision. If you start with a clear-headed
view of e-business as a question of business strategy, you will be on the right track.

Lo-2 Evaluating E-Business Models

After creating detailed models, the next step is to evaluate the economic feasibility of an idea in
quantitative terms that are based on an assessment of the value of objects for all actors involved.
Feasibility of an e-business model means that all actors involved can make a profit or increase
their economic utility.
Again, our technique for determining feasibility is a lightweight approach. We focus mainly on
building confidence that an e-business idea is of real interest for all actors involved rather than
on a precisely calculating all profits, which is an unrealistic goal anyway. Our approach is to take
into account the net in and out flows of value objects. The net value of these flows should be
sufficient to cover all other expenses.
An additional confidence-building step is to analyze what-if scenarios, which can help
companies understand the sensitivity of e-business models with respect to financial parameters,
future trends, and other parameters such as customer behavior. Analyzing what-if scenarios can
also help find the weak and strong points of e-business models. Our evaluation approach consists
of creating profit sheets, evaluating the objects in the profit sheet in terms of their cost and
benefit to the participating actors, and evaluating what-if scenarios.
We create profit sheets based on either the actor or value activity level. We use the actor level to
create confidence in an e-business idea. And we use the value activity level to evaluate how
profitable activities actually are. (We show only a fragment of the profit sheets for enterprise
actors here, and we leave out the utility-increase analysis for the reader actor because we have
discussed end customer utility analysis elsewhere.
Each time the path crosses an actor’s value interface, we update the sheet with value objects that
flow in and out of the actor. We reduce details on the profit sheet by removing all value objects
that are not money streams and that enter the actor and leave the actor on the same scenario path.
For example, we remove telephone connection and interconnection from the actor Last Mile
because the telephone connection is an enriched interconnection.
Last Mile enriches the interconnection by exploiting a district telephone switch and the last mile
of copper or fiber optics. Value objects in the profit sheet must be assigned a value, expressed in
monetary units such as Euros or dollars. The telephone connection fee per scenario occurrence is
based on a start tariff and a connection-time-dependent tariff. The interconnection fees is based
on a fraction (the interconnection factor) of the telephone connection fee and on the physical
distance that Data Runner bridges.
A market regulator typically determines the interconnection factor to increase competition
between telecommunication operators. In effect, strong incumbent operators are typically forced
to pay a larger interconnection fee to other operators than to new market entrants.
Typically, the termination factor is smaller than the interconnection factor. By using this
strategy, we can analyze the effects of a decreasing interconnection factor while the termination
factor remains the same. This models a situation in which Data Runner takes on the risk of a
decreasing interconnection factor.
What-if scenarios can be useful in representing the fluidity of e-business models.
They can help capture structural changes in e-business models, such as a change in actors and
the activities they perform. What-if scenarios can also help capture changes in value,
The e-business model embodies decisions that impact other requirements, especially business
process and information system requirements. E-business value modeling can help yield a
framework for such requirements, and can aid in determining the first step in requirements
engineering for e-business information systems. The concept of value provides the crucial
vantage point to understand innovative e-business models.

Lo-3 Design E-Business 

E-business is short for “electronic business.” As an overarching term, it refers to any method of
utilizing digital information and communication technologies to support or streamline business
processes – from preparation to implementation.

Various factors are to be considered when developing an e-business design. They include
customer satisfaction, structure of the organization, and the ratio of in-house manufacture to
outsourcing, whether the company is function oriented or process oriented, the mode of selling,
distribution of the product, etc.
The first step in e-business design is self-diagnosis. The management of an organization should
examine the effect of changing customer tastes and preferences, the business environment, and
the emerging technology trends, on the company, and the steps should be taken to provide
direction to the company so that it can cope up with the changing environment.

Firms should follow an outside-in approach, where the business model is worked out in such a
way that customer needs are given utmost importance. They must align the business model and
process to fulfill the customer needs.
To focus creative thinking and retain leadership, companies usually use three types of
competencies.

They are service excellence, operational excellence, and continuous innovation excellence.
Service excellence deals with delivering the best services to the customers and offering superior
value to them.
Operational excellence deals with production and delivery of error or defect free products and
services at reasonable prices.
Continuous innovation excellence deals with continuously increasing the performance
standards by finding new ways to do things, and developing new products and services ahead of
competitors.

For changing a company’s business model into an e-business model, a fool proof strategy has to
be formulated. It essentially needs to have three components – knowledge building, capability
evaluation, and e-business design.

Knowledge building includes knowing your customers and delivering according to their needs.
Capability evaluation includes a company evaluating itself to see whether it is able to serve its
customers with the existing infrastructure. After collecting all the information and analyzing it,
the organization embarks on designing the e-business model best suited for its processes.
Lo-4 implementation of an e-business strategy
Implementation strategies are methods or actions that aim to overcome implementation
barriers, increase the pace and effectiveness of implementation, and sustain interventions over
time.

Five types of implementation strategies

Implementation strategies can form the basis for an implementation plan that maps out the
implementation process. Implementation strategies have been categorized into the following
groups:

 Dissemination strategies target staff and stakeholder knowledge, awareness, attitudes

and intentions to adopt the innovation. Key messages and materials are developed and
shared with relevant audiences.
 Implementation process strategies enable an innovation to be planned and delivered
over the different stages of implementation. These include assessing the context,
engaging with key stakeholders, and monitoring implementation and making
improvements.
 Integration strategies are aimed at integrating a specific innovation into a specific
setting. For example, if you want staff to introduce a new practice, staff roles and
responsibilities may need to be revised and updated, and record systems may need to be
modified.
 Capacity-building strategies increase the motivation and capability of people to engage
in implementation, such as the delivery of training.
 Scale-up strategies aim to build capacity to implement policy, practice or services in
multiple settings. Examples include train-the-trainer initiatives and developing system
infrastructure such as data systems.
What are the six barriers to strategy implementation?
 top-down management style;
 unclear strategy and conflicting priorities;
 ineffective senior management team;
 poor vertical communication;
 poor communication across function; and
 Inadequate down-the-line leadership skills.