The terms e-commerce and e-business are often used interchangeably, however they both have different interpretations that have different impact and influence on today’s businesses. The only similarity prevailing is the electronic medium that includes use of Internet for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) to conduct business activities. All e-commerce companies can be termed as subset of e-businesses but not vice versa. Let’s understand the context behind ‘why’.
Definition of E-Commerce: E-Commerce is an abbreviation of electronic commerce where any transaction is executed over the internet. It caters for buying and selling of products and services. These transactions activities essentially involve monetary transactions are termed as “e-commerce”.
Definition of E-Business: E-Business is an abbreviation of electronic business that includes e-commerce transactions as well as online execution of internal business processes like management of production, inventory, risk, finance etc. It is a broader and more complex strategy that focuses on efficiency and cost savings.
Difference between E-Commerce and E-Business
E-Commerce covers only the outward facing operations i.e. online buying and selling of goods and services that include order receiving, dealing, delivering and paying. It is an interactive commercial transaction where a buyer can communicate with the seller and vice versa without having to personally meet. The e-commerce strategy aims at understanding consumer behaviour that help them provide reliable, functional and user-friendly services. It’s a new business model that offers convenience of shopping in a better way. It has transformed brick and mortar businesses toclick and mortar businesses (those businesses that have both an online and offline presence). E-commerce is a narrower discipline of e-business.
E-Business has emerged as a mainstream solution for many businesses. It focuses on the business as a whole and is not restricted to commercial transactions. It involves streamlined and automated construction and maintenance of business processes across production, development, corporate infrastructure and product management. With internal and external connectivity through internet or intranet or extranet, an e-business strategy aims at reducing operating costs to increase productivity and improve bottom line. It enables better responsiveness to customer needs, transparent communication with businesses and improved vendor relations.
Case Study
Firms like Amazon and Flipkart are involved in practicing both e-commerce and e-business using shopping cart technology with a turnkey solution. As an e-business, they incorporate personalisation, effective customer service and streamlined supply-chain management. They use the two most common business models- business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) after carefully analysing their business and accordingly evaluating the best system to realise the benefits and ensure reduced operational costs of each model.
Importance of E-Commerce and E-Business
Momentum in the economic development due to globalisation in the recent years has compelled businesses to move beyond domestic and national markets. The penetration into international markets through technological transition provides businesses a superior competitive position that enables them tobuy, sell and manage on a global scale with much speed and ease.
E-Commerce and E-Business are termed asgrowth intervention tool that invites intense competition among online vendors. Hence, it has become imperative for businesses to adjust to evolving technologies, regularly integrate new systems and satisfy a broad variety of consumers. To support this, many empirical researches and studies prove that businesses with adoption to e-commerce and e-business strategy perform better. E-Commerce sales are growing more as compared to its counterpart because it facilitates efforts to improve operations that result in substantial cost savings along with the following advantages:
- Reduced transaction costs;
- Lowered advertising and promotion costs;
- Instant communication between buyers and sellers;
- Ability to target new customers;
- Shortened supply chains, including decreased transport barriers and delivery costs;
- Overruled limitation of time and space.
Solutions and Services
To manage and revolutionise the ‘e’ side of your business, Silver Touch Technologies offer a complete range of affordable customised solutions and services for both e-commerce and e-business.
For e-Commerce integration solution, we specialise in building a virtual store with an interactive website, content database with an advanced search feature, secure processing of financial transactions, business intelligence for customer-centric marketing, integration with important electronic mediums like email and social media, and reliable security systems to safeguard the most sensitive information.
For e-Business solutions, we provide effective SAP Business One solution that automates and integrates core business processes with real-time data synchronisation to maximise user convenience and administration efficiency. It is available on premise or the cloud. Get your free demo today! Call us on +44 – (0) 203-872-5140 or email us at info@silvertouchtech.co.uk .
