E-commerce

E-commerce is defined generally as electronic sales transactions over the internet. M-commerce stands for mobile commerce, which is a new concept supported by the advance of wireless technology. Business transactions made on mobile internet-capable devices, such as handheld appliances, fall into the realm of m-commerce.

The goal is to digitize transactions, which are simply defined as exchanges of information. The number of opportunities is limited only by your creativity, cost, and good business sense. The best advice is to determine the best opportunities for payback and address them first. Make sure the benefit will pay back or exceed the cost. The following is a summarized list of functions and activities where e-business applications are becoming embedded into the typical business model. Visualize, if you can, a business where each of these business activities is completely integrated with the others, to form a completely integrated e-business.

• After sales service; ie. billing, demand planning, engineering, inventory planning, purchasing, receivables
• Business analytics; ie. financial performance, marketing, workforce, production, enterprise management
• Consultant management
• Customer relationship management; ie. account management, customer self-service, contact management & communications, promotions, surveys, quality, help desk, field service
• E-procurement
• E-store/e-exchange/product catalog; ie. delivering b2b and b2c e-commerce
• Finance; ie. asset management, accounting, budgets, invoicing, payables & receivables, investments, government tax returns & payments, payroll administration
• Grant & donation management
• Human Resources Management; ie. resource planning, benefits administration, reward programs, recruiting &hiring, workforce management, pension administration
• Investor relations
• Marketing and sales activities; ie. Products, technical information, sales support, product life cycle management, corporate resume, portfolio, customer lists.

Areas of functional expertise encompass the following sectors:

• Manufacturing
• Construction
• Financial Services
• Government
• Telecommunications