Difference between Ecommerce and Ebusiness.

Ecommerce Vs EBusiness
 
While the words Commerce and Business don't have much difference in English and in fact are largely
interchangeable as nouns describing organized profit-seeking activity, there is a difference between
eCommerce and eBusiness. The difference is quite artificial, but different terms do carry different meanings.
The first wave of thinking about electronic business was a reaction to the success of Amazon and Dell in selling
products over the Internet. Electronic business transactions involving money are "eCommerce" activities.
However, there is much more to eBusiness than selling products: what about marketing, procurement and
customer education? Even to sell on-line successfully, much more is required than merely having a website
that accepts credit cards. We need to have a web site that people want to visit, accurate catalog information
and good logistics.For selling online successfully one needs to know basics of website development. The term
"eBusiness" was introduced as a deliberate attempt to say to people: "Your first understanding of eCommerce
was too narrow. To be successful, we need to think more broadly." 

Ebusiness goes far beyond ecommerce or buying and selling over the Internet, and deep into the processes
and cultures of an enterprise. It is the powerful business environment that is created when you connect critical
business systems directly to customers, employees, vendors, and business partners, using Intranets,
Extranets, ecommerce technologies, collaborative applications, and the Web. Dell Computer gets a lot of
attention as a pioneering ebusiness today and is the best example of this form of business. It sells $ 15m
worth of computers from its websites each day. The company has created a ‘fully integrated value chain ’ – a
three-way information partnership with its suppliers and customers by treating them as collaborators who
together find ways of improving efficiency across the entire chain of supply and demand. Dell's suppliers have
real-time access to information about its orders. Through its corporate extranet, they can organize their
production and delivery to ensure that their customer always has just enough of the right parts to keep the
production line moving smoothly. By plugging its suppliers directly into the customer database, Dell has
ensured that they will instantly know about changes in their demand. Similarly, by allowing entry to customers
into its supply chain via its website, Dell enables them to track the progress of their orders from the factory to
their doorstep. Successful new-businesses can emerge from nowhere. Trends suggest it takes little more than
two years for a start-up to emerge out of nowhere, formulate an innovative business idea, establish a web-
presence and reach a dominant position in its chosen sector. The high valuation of the stocks of such start-ups
and the massive amount of venture capital flowing into their businesses is proof enough that complacency is
foolhardy here. America has already reached a threshold in ebusiness, from where it is set to accelerate
intohyper-growth, as per Forrester Research. Britain and Germany will go into the same level of hyper-growth
two years after America, with Japan, France and Italy, a further two years behind.
 
In the past the rules of business were simple – Beat the competition, squeeze your suppliers and keep your
customers in the dark. But with increased collaboration in the completely networked world, uncertainties arise.
Nobody can predict how the customer with all the perfect market information available at his disposal will
respond to the rapidly shifting business alliances and federations or how companies will manage such
customers. The need of the hour is a good strategy. Early ecommerce companies have used their
understanding of the technology’s potential and the absence of any competition to steal a march and enter
markets that would previously have been closed to them, but in future simply having a good business idea and
being technologically smart might not be enough. The global giants, after taking a while to see the opportunity
seem to have worked out how to adapt their multi-layered supply chains and diverse distribution channels and
are finally getting into the race. Besides this, for successful implementation of ebusiness security is the key
issue. Ebusiness security is very important as the transactions processed contains critical information. Read
More onEbusiness Security

What is eBusiness?

eBusiness is the integration of a company's business including

products, procedures, and services over the Internet.
 You turn your company from a
business into an eBusiness when you
integrate your sales, marketing,
accounting, manufacturing, and
operations with your web site activities.
An eBusiness uses the Internet as a
center for all business activities.
eCommerce is the online component of
an eBusiness.

What is eCommerce?

Electronic commerce or "eCommerce" covers the range of on-line

business activities for products and services, both business-to-
business and business-to-consumer, through the Internet. This
course breaks eCommerce into:

Online Shopping - the

scope of information and
activities that provides
the customer with the
information they need to
conduct business, and
make an informed
buying decision.
Online Purchasing - the
technology infrastructure
for the exchange of data
and the purchase of a
product over the Internet

E-Commerce and E-Business are two completely different terms but unfortunately they
are always used interchangeably by many of us. The reason behind this lies in the
meanings of "business" and "commerce" in English language. But there is a difference
between e-commerce and e-business. There are many people who understand the subtle
differences between the two and there had always been a debate among these two
groups about the differences and similarities between e-commerce and e-business. The
aim of writing this article is to clearly bring out the differences between the two as both
of them are completely different phenomenon.

The differences between the two are as follows:

1. E-Commerce is the subset of E-Business. If you remember the Venn diagram you
studied in school then you can very well understand what I am trying to convey. The
later one is a very broad concept while the former one is just a small part of it. This
relationship will be cleared in the subsequent points.

2. Those activities which essentially involve monetary transactions are termed as "e-
commerce". However, e-business is a much broader term. There are many other things
besides selling including but not limited to marketing, procurement of raw materials or
goods, customer education, looking for suppliers etc.

3. To sell online is e-commerce but to bring and retain customers and educate them
online about the product or service is e-business. Having a website to do it is not
sufficient. But, having a professionally built website loaded with latest technologies to
capture the attention of the visitor and win his/her appreciation is required. When money
is involved then the first thing which user looks for is safety and security of his/her
money. Having a website laden with such qualities is important.

4. When Dell sell computers, laptops, monitors, printers, accessories etc online then it is
not engaged in e-commerce but e-business. Let me tell you how. When a visitor comes
on the website, the first thing he see is website design and navigation as well as those
things which are going to help him find what he is looking for and if he directly lands on
the page he was looking for, he looks for the information related to it. The information
provided should be appealing and clear maximum doubts of the visitor so as to convert
him in a client. Till now no money has been exchanged nor been talked about. So, was
this e-commerce? No, it is e-business which guides the visitor.

5. E-commerce has also been defined as a process covering outward processes that
touch customers, suppliers and external partners while e-business covers internal
processes such as production, inventory management, product development, risk
management, finance etc.

In all, e-commerce can be described as the use of the Internet and the web to transact
business. More formally, digitally enabled commercial transactions between and among
organizations and individuals. On the other hand, e-business can be described as the
digital enablement of transactions and process within a firm, involving information
systems under the control of the firm. Moreover, e-business applications turn into e-
commerce precisely when an exchange of value occurs.

I simply love the web. According to me, it's the most happening place in the world and
the best place to interact and gain knowledge. My strong attraction towards site analysis
from users as well as search engines perspective made me to pursue the career in
Internet Marketing. I started as SEO but now I work as an Internet Marketing Specialist.

To get in touch please contact me at LinkedIn or Facebook

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