Ans :
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 many areas of
business and disciplines of business management studies.
The following are some of the areas which have an impact of E-commerce:
• Marketing: Issues of online advertising, marketing strategies, 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 and
mail order using catalogues or leaflets. This moved to telemarketing and TV
selling with the advances in telephone and television technology and finally
developed into e-marketing spawning ‘e-CRM’ (Electronic Customer
Relationship Management), data mining etc. by creating new channels for
direct sales and promotion.
Computer Sciences: Development of different technologies and languages
to support e-commerce and e-business. Linking front and back office legacy
systems with web based technologies is an example.
• Finance and Accounting: Online banking has become popular with
complex transactions becoming possible without physically going to bank.
• Economics: There was a positive impact of e-commerce on local and global
economies leading to understanding the concepts of a digital and knowledge
based economy.
• 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.
• Production and Operations Management (Manufacturing): Moving
from mass production to demand-driven, customer pull rather than the
manufacturer push of the past has become possible. Web based Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) systems can also be used to forward orders
directly to designers and/or production floor within seconds, thus 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 allow for rapid changes at a minimum cost leading to
minimized inventories and savings.
• Management Information Systems: There has been an impact on analysis,
design and implementation of e-business systems within an organization as
wen as issues of integration of front end and back end systems.
• Huma Resource Management: There has been an impact leading to
, Online recruitment and working from home.
• Business Law and Ethics: There has been an impact on different legal and
ethical issues that have arisen as a result of a global virtual market and on
issues such as copyright laws, privacy of customer information, legality of
electronic contracts, etc.
