From Library Journal
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
From the Inside Flap
Why is it that new e-commerce companies are causing huge swings in our global stock markets--swings that are realized with both positive and negative indicators? The notion of electronic commerce, or e-commerce, is one that has been present for decades. If we accept this electronic practice as a topic that is not so new, then why is it that constant introductions of new e-commerce technology innovations and Internet-related solutions are causing such dramatic changes in how we live and work each day? What are the characteristics of an e-society? Will e-commerce soon become a tethered electronic medium that everyone just accepts as a normal daily routine part of one's day? Compare this new e-commerce evolution to that of the past few decades. What is it that actually defines the term e-commerce? What is an e-business? Is it merely a form of e-commerce? Which e-commerce technologies, when properly synchronized, define an e-business opportunity? What e-commerce roles do global corporations play?
This book will explore many of these questions by providing an analysis of the business issues, the business dynamics, and suggestive societal impacts that are a direct result of the introduction of e-commerce. This new electronic frontier, referred to quite simply as e-commerce, has introduced tremendous change into our business and social structures around the world. Many e-commerce technological challenges have forced global corpo-rate enterprises to acquire faster and better communications capabilities. This suggests an important question: To what end are global corporations having to rethink their own core business approaches, contrasted to new, innovative e-commerce solutions?
These global e-commerce marketplaces include business-to-business, business-to-consumer, government-to-business, government-to-public sector, and business-to-both suppliers and consumers. Each of these areas has been touched in some form by e-commerce. In fact, if an enterprise is to be competitive and profitable in today's electronic economy, it is safe to assume that the enterprise is either fully engaged in some form of e-commerce or the enterprise is seriously considering the internal changes required to become more effective at leveraging utilities of e-commerce.
The term e-commerce has forsaken itself into several forms, with several variations of the definition. In general, however, e-commerce is a particular state of business, com-prising a series of simple and complex electronic business transactions. An e-commerce transaction implies that computer-based, and network-based, electronic transactions have to be successfully executed. Solutions in e-commerce often leverage the Internet, and its many vast subnetworks, to enable a particular technological action to occur. For instance, solutions involve advertising a product or service, purchasing (via electronic means) a product or a service, being billed for a product or a service, paying for a product or a service; and then (not so straightforward) determining the logistics involved in the man-ufacturing and delivery of that product throughout the entire supply chain. These manufacturing and delivery environments will leverage technologies of e-commerce to competitively perform in their daily business, as suppliers of many types of products and/or services. Based on these concepts, the term e-commerce is not so difficult to understand; in simple terms, e-commerce is an electronic business transaction that utilizes a network. It is the complexities of events that need to occur, in a synchronized manner, that seem to complicate the exact meaning of the word "e-commerce."
In this book we will explore the various meanings of the term "e-commerce," and we will also explore many useful designs and approaches that lead to excellent e-commerce solutions. The Internet world of e-commerce has yielded many innovative solutions that display outstanding characteristics of Design Quality. These are characteristics that are actually built in to the final e-commerce solution set. These design successes occur not by accident, but through careful planning and execution of a timely, global business market-ing strategy, tightly coupled to a fast and effective technical Internet development team.
There is another important term that falls within the scope of e-commerce. This term is referred to as e-business. The term "e-business" implies performing day-to-day business transactions, using specific combinations of e-commerce technologies that are designed to allow for intercompany commerce. The notion of an e-business may, in fact, be thought of as a combination of e-commerce technologies (or utilities) combined to form the e-business. For example:
Web-enabled interfaces to a company's product or service line(s)
Electronic catalogs and hosting of various other types of information content
Application interfacing to back-end office systems to accomplish A/R functions
Forms of Web-based electronic data interchange services
Simple graphical screen design metaphors for comfortable user interfaces
Customer care interfaces for registration, service delivery, and support
These combined design quality features tend to attract and retain a larger population of Internet end users over longer periods of time. How does this all integrate to work together as a single e-commerce environment? In technical terms, certain types of computers (referred to as servers) are the actual machine engines of e-businesses. These servers can host (and cooperate with) many other e-commerce functions available across the Internet (for example, credit card billing services, payment services, and catalog viewing) on many other servers. So, in simplest terms, servers merely "serve up" information content and deliver various business functionalities associated with that specific content. This serving of consumer-related services is very attractive to many businesses, and also to many consumers across every sector of industry. Many social systems seem to be creating environments that are enabled through specific approaches of e-commerce. This has shown both positive and negative effects.
Many global Internet-oriented businesses are capturing this new type of e-commerce, as idea-share, and some of these companies have moved their own stock market share holder values up (some in the course of a day's time) as much as 50 to 200 points (for example, Netscape, Yahoo!, Amazon, AOL, eBay—and there are plenty more). We suppose that one line of exploratory thought could be based on corporate mergers in the Internet and technology sector(s). This notion of "mergers" seems to be occurring in many areas of technology, especially the e-commerce forms of technologies. The assertion here might be that it is simple to negotiate corporate buy-outs and mergers, with highly inflated stocks (like Internet stocks) that have yet to consistently demonstrate apparent revenues. What a paradox this seems to be; it is happening, though, each week in many countries around the world.
The Internet, in practice, and many applications of e-commerce, combined, have the unique potential to evolve into very important change agents of social, global change. These change agents are stimulating a change that will last for many decades, if not permanently. Changing the way we perform commerce around the world is, and will continue to be, a significant shift for many cultures. Changing the way we operate within our own homes, for instance, can be very exciting for many individuals. These are just a couple of areas where change is happening now, through implementa-tions of various forms of e-commerce. The impact of e-commerce and the Internet will become even more pervasive throughout all facets of our global societies (businesses, governments, private sectors, educational systems, practices of medicine, personaliza-tion devices), as we progress into the next decade. Many of these fascinating and thought-provoking ideas are worthy of a more in-depth treatment, which is provided throughout the chapters of this book.
Consider that the term "e-commerce" technically implies electronic devices and complicated networks (like the Internet) to be able to work together to complete commerce-related tasks. Since the earliest designs of the Internet (in 1969) its growth toward enabling e-commerce transactions to occur has been nothing short of spectacular. The Internet was initially limited to several thousands of network end users (or, end points), and these end users were mainly located throughout North America. Today, Internet end users exceed several millions around the world, and the numbers continue to increase daily. Estimates indicate that approximately 60,000-70,000 end users per day join the Internet. Some other estimates claim that approximately 1.2 servers are connected to the Internet each minute. These are significant numbers.
The original team involved in the invention of the Internet, recognizing its potential benefits and networking brilliance, was concerned from the start that this might one day turn into an unregulated global frontier. Much of the exact history of the Internet, and some fundamental views of the intended operations of the Internet, can be found at isoc, The Internet Society's Web site. There are some fascinating topics to consider when studying the history of exactly how the Internet was originally designed and created.
Today, the number of Internet end users in North America has grown to well over 80 million. This suggests a growth rate of approximately 340 percent during 1996 into 1999; prior to that, only 18 million end users logged on to the Internet. This has been a phenomenal and unprecedented growth in many positive ways--positive in the sense that, by virtue of the Internet and all of its global subnetworks, it allows for unprece-dented forms of social (global) change to occur. Positive in the sense that, by virtue of this same newly discovered worldwide community, and all of its openness and free-dom, we are constantly challenged in a way that effects changes across several different dimensions of our personal lives and daily business practices.
This global phenomenon called e-commerce, combined with the Internet, has rapidly introduced itself into several geographies around the world. As an example, approximately 25 percent of companies in Europe are operating with some form of access to the Internet. Finland is one of the most technologically-centered countries in the world. Many global industries are already claiming significant revenues through utilization of e-commerce business solutions. Overall, 60 percent of all global compa-nies now have access to the Internet, with 20 percent more currently planning to gain access during the next year.
Several of the leading countries in Europe continue to be successful in adopting practices of e-commerce, and they have moved ahead in several significant areas, both industrially and socially. It is estimated that 46 percent of all companies with Internet access are already conducting electronic business, using "utilities" of e-commerce, in conjunction with the Internet. Spain is followed by France and Germany, while companies in the U.K., Netherlands, and Italy also appear to be introducing many diverse innovations of e-commerce. The majority of industries strongly believe that adaptations of e-commerce will be important to their industry. Most global industries expect the amount of electronic business (or e-business) they do "online" to increase next year. Telecommunications technologies, and the cost of entry for many industries to enhance their own telecommunications capabilities, seem to be a prevailing challenge across many global industries. The cost of higher-speed infrastructures, attached to higher-speed telecommunications services, is significant. These must be present before any e-commerce solution can be considered--unconstrained. Conversely, companies cannot afford the high costs of introducing enhanced telecommunications capabilities unless this cost is amortized across a diverse set of customers seeking this same service utility. This customer set is being aggressively pursued by almost every industry.
As a result of this new electronic environment, appropriately referred to as e-commerce, many global enterprises are beginning to develop strategies that embellish the use of e-commerce technologies as their fundamental means of conducting business. In fact, many small businesses have also been able to establish significant presence points in worldwide markets, all by virtue of deploying e-commerce technologies within their organization. This premise of technologically empowering both suppliers and consumers has emerged as somewhat of a highly competitive, virtual landscape. This notion applies across many desktop computer manufacturers, networking technology suppliers, and a multitude of other hardware and software manufacturers.
Many of the global industry segments are now actively pursuing various missions in e-commerce. To remain competitive and profitable in our emerging global e-commerce economy, business enterprises must create virtually connected organizations that leverage e-commerce technologies that significantly accelerate their go-to-market initiatives. Competitive corporations must enhance their business processes to improve their capabilities in acquiring timely business intelligence, higher-quality designs in their products and services, and electronic business capabil-ities in a safe, secure, and private environment.
The projected growth in the e-commerce market space is expected to exceed $327 billion by 2002. The creative business enterprises have finely tuned strategies that utilize e-commerce technologies as a principal medium of conducting business for both the supplier and the consumer. Consider the evolution of e-commerce. This new environment is one that enables a virtual market space to introduce new competitive approaches and a computer desktop dominance enabling vast networking connections in many countries of the world.
The business enterprises that are buying and selling over commercial networks must use certain push and pull technologies to gain access to desktops. These technologies allow the business enterprise to appropriately interact with key decision makers. Consequently, there are ensuing battles to dominate access to and from the desktop of industrial enterprises, public sectors, and governments, both small and large.
Consider the different changes imposed across global societies by various e-commerce technological solutions. Observe the subtle momentum where these technological factors have rendered their benefits. Likewise, it is intriguing to analyze and observe the tactics used by the various combatants involved in this struggle for Internet desktop dominance.
This book is truly an exploration of a vast number of provoking thoughts and subject areas one can consider while contemplating the world of electronic commerce. We hope that you find this book both interesting to read and more than remarkable in its content and suggestion. Although this material is not necessarily a "handbook" for e-commerce designs and applications, it certainly helps to establish some of the basic underpinnings necessary to engage in specific endeavors of global, regional, or even localized forms of e-commerce.
