How Marketing Practices Are Changing e:business by Moses Isaac

E-business describes the use of electronic means and platform to conduct a company's business. The advent of the Internet has greatly increased the ability of companies to conduct their business faster, more accurately over a wide range of time and space, at reduced cost, and with the ability to customise and personalise customer offerings. Countless companies have set up website to inform and promote their products and services. They have created intranets to facilitate employees communicating with one another to facilitate downloading and uploading information to and from the company's computers. Companies have also set up extranets with major suppliers and distributors to facilitate information exchange,orders,transactions and payments. Bill Gates of Microsoft claims that Microsoft is almost entirely run electronically, there is hardly any paper flowing through the company because every thing is on the computer screen.

E-Commerce is more specific than e-business, it means that in addition to providing information to visitors about the company, its history, policies, products and job opportunities, the company or site offers to transact or facilitate the selling of products and services online. Most company sites are still just providing information, not doing e-commerce. Amazon.com, CDNow, e-Toys, e-steel and e-plastics net are samples of e-commerce sites.

E-commerce has given rise in turn to e-purchasing and e-marketing. E-purchasing means companies decide to purchase goods, services and information from various online suppliers. Smart e-purchasing has already saved companies millions of dollars. E-marketing describes company efforts to inform, communicate, promote and sell its products and services over the internet. The e term is also used in terms such as - e-finance, e-learning, and e- service. But as some one observed the e will eventually be dropped when most business practice is online.

Moses Isaac
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