E-Business &

Business Intelligence
 What is e-business?
Definitions from the Web
• E-Business (electronic business) is, in
its simplest form, the conduct of
business on the Internet
• E-Business is taken to mean
conducting business electronically,
both within an organisation and
externally, with clients, communities
and partners.
 e-Business vs. e-
Commerce?
• Academic texts are divided in their definitions:
• Some seeing e-Commerce as the overarching concept
(e.g. Timmers, 1999)
• And others seeing Commerce narrowly as buying and
selling electronically (e.g. Kalakota and Robinson, 2001)

e.g. “more generic term than eCommerce – e-business refers to not

only buying and selling but also servicing customers and
collaborating with business partners”
E-Biz: Integration Dimension
• Not just being able to sell books, but
knowing how many books you've
sold, and to whom, and also being
able to answer questions like “what
books are they buying next?”
• Integrated internal and external
processes
 E-Biz: Networking
Dimension
• Electronic business (e-business) is
any process that a business
organization conducts over a
computer-mediated network
 E-Business Goals
• Business goals include
– improving efficiencies,
– reducing costs,
– increasing speed of transactions,
– expanding markets,
– enhancing business partnerships and,
most importantly,
– providing additional value for clients
 Business Processes
• Production- focused processes include procurement,
ordering, automated stock replenishment, payment
processing and other links with suppliers, as well as
production control and processes more directly related
to the production process.
• Customer-focused processes include marketing,
selling, processing of customers orders and payments,
and customer management and support
• Internal or management-focused processes include
employee services, training, information sharing, video
conferencing, and recruiting.
 Overall business process

Suppliers Manufacture Customers

Processing of
some kind

Some “flow” Some

Some input
Output

Finance, HR, Stock Control, …

 E-Business Applications

I Flow(I O
)
Auctions Process Control Customer relationship
Management
Electronic Ordering Workflow
Electronic Invoice Web marketing
Intranet
Electronic Payment Customer Integration
Finance (status/pull)
Supplier Integration
(Push) HR
 Business intelligence (BI)
• A conceptual framework for decision
support. It combines architecture,
databases (or data warehouses),
analytical tools, and applications