Understanding E-Business: Challenges And Opportunities

Research report on "investigates the opportunities and challenges associated with conducting e-business. Portions of the discussion references applicable e-business standards and how they are applied and leveraged. "

What is E-Business?

E-Business generally refers to the processes which are associated with the usage of internet along with the technologies associated with it for the purpose of transforming of any kind of business processes so as to E-enable all sections of the value chain of a business which involves the acquiring, retaining customers, and serving and many more (Soto-Acosta, Popa & Palacios-Marqués, 2016). This is done so as to have an interaction with the employees along with the customers and the rest of the world. E-Commerce might be considered to a small section of an E-Business but is one of the vital section of the entire E-Business architecture. E-Business is associated with representing the major trend that has occurred in the management, which is comparable with the important business trend that includes the management of the supply chain, leasing and many more. E-Business can be defined as the business which is enabled by making use of the internet (Baarslag et al., 2017). This process is associated with the application of the various internet technologies and the standards which might be including the HTTP, COBRA, XML, HTML and many more. The figure provided below depicts the several level of the E-Business.

Fig 1: Several levels of Internet enabled business or E-Business

Challenges faced by E-Business:

Along with the advantages various kind of challenges are faced by the E-Business and some of the common challenges faced by E-Business has been listed below:

1. Security challenges: the security risks associated with the e-business is much more than the traditional business system so it is very important to secure the e-business systems. The access to the e-business is more as the users are associated with the usage of the internet which increases the access to the e-business more than the traditional e-business (Lilian 2014). Hackers often act as a great threat for the e-business and some of the common security concern for e-business includes the keeping of the information of the business and the customers confidential and private along with the authenticity of the data and the data integrity.
2. Confidentiality and Privacy: This is generally considered to be the extent to which the access of the personal and the business information is provided to the other business or individual. It is very import to secure the confidential information of any kind of business and access should only be provided to the intended receivers (Markides, 2015). But dealing with the confidentiality become more difficult while dealing with the e-business. In order to secure such information it is very important to protect the information from any kind of unauthorized access. It is also important to ensure the safe transmission and storage of the data.
3. Authenticity: a great amount of challenge is put forward by the e-business transaction while establishing authenticity. This mainly happens because the electronic information can be altered and copied very easily. Besides this both the parties who are involved in the e-business demands for the assurance regarding the fact that the other party is the person as they claim to be, and this happens specially when an order is placed by a customer and the customer proceeds toward the electronic payment procedure(Gottwald, Laatikainen, & Kyttä, 2016). The authenticity would be achieved at an much greater rate if combination of various techniques are used.
4. Data integrity: Data integrity is associated with asking the answers for the following question that is "Can the information be changed or corrupted in any way?". This asking of the question is initially associated with providing the assurance that the message which has been received is similar to the message which has been sent. It is very important to look into the matter that the information of the e-business is kept confident and also look into the matter that the data is not changed during the transmission.
5. Availability: This is one of the major concerns which are specifically pertinent to the business' customers and this is mainly due to the reason that certain information is made available for the customers when they need it. It is also very important to look into the matter that the Messages are being delivered in a reliable and timely fashion, and besides this it is also very important to see that the information is being stored and retrieved as required (Chen et al., 2018).
6. Borderless economies: Along with the increased rate of mobile technology usage the consumers have been empowered in various ways. This in turn has also been associated with opening the doors for the digital economy which has made globalization reach a new level. Along with this it is also seen that the traditional boundaries are also being eliminated associated with the increase in the number of online retailers to the new geographies. Due to all this reason the companies are left with an situation where they have to deal with the various government regulations, geopolitical status, international competition, and extensive local and "stateless income". The modern day E-Commerce is having a race for the purpose of providing the premium services which are the best for their customers along with finding the right amount of balance between the globalization and the localization.
7. Building of trust and brand as the key differentiator: The success of any business is dependent on the building of the trust and brad loyalty. It has been seen that the traditional brand building exercises are mostly irrelevant for the e-business sector (Veit et al., 2014). In case of any kind of failure to respond to the demand of the customer might be leading to the failure of the retention of the customers.
8. Poor experience due to disparate systems: presence of various kind of data management system like the POS or point of sale, ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning and CRM or Customer Relationship Management is different from one another in terms of architecture, deployment and usage. This are generally built on dated technology which are prone to stagnation. It has been seen that the resources are being spent on the other systems which are initially interfering the demand of internal business and are also responsible for the creation of distraction of the focus from the tasks which are very important.  
9. Lack of cross-departmental collaboration: the challenges faced while running of the e-business can be classified into four major divisions and this includes the technological challenges, data carnation challenges, challenges faced during delivery of the products and challenges in managing the peoples (Pedersen & Netter, 2015). It has been that the modern companies associated with e-business face challenges during collaborating with the different departments, some of them are isolated geographically and some are placed in different time zones. So it is very important for the marketers, merchandisers and the e-commerce managers to learn the ways of operating strategically by making use of one integrated channel.
10. Personalization: it has been seen that the modern e-commerce is associated with thriving in order to deliver the best type of personalized experience for the consumers. The management of the respiratory of the customer’s data is seen to be very much challenging and for this reason it is essential for the the e-business companies to understand the process of using the data.
11. Easy use and technology: The consumers have been provided with more power along with the increased global competition in the e-commerce sector due to the ease of use and the advances that the technology has made. One of the way forward for the e-commerce is the Omni-channel retailing which is associated with putting pressure upon the companies in order to deal with the technical issues while running the online business.

Opportunities of using E-Business:

The implementation of the e-business the business are capable of selling their products as well as service online by which they become capable of reaching more customers which the traditional brick-and-mortar stores are not capable of. The internet is also used by the e-business for the purpose of acquiring wholesale products or supplies for using it in in-house production (Alkhanak, Lee & Khan, 2015). The facets that the e-business is having are often considered to be an e-procurement which is associated with allowing the business to cut the costs drastically. The e-business which is operating without any usage of the electronic upfront might be associated with the usage of the e-procurement which acts as a major way responsible for the tracking and management of the purchasing.

Along with the buying of the products and selling of the products the e-business might also be associated with the handling of the other traditional business aspects as well. With the usage of the electronic chat, which generally acts as one of the technical form of customer support, might be acting as one of the excellent example for this.  There exist many e-businesses which are associated with the usage of the chat option in order supplement the traditional method of customer support (Zheng et al., 2016). The usage of the virtual computer systems like the technical support operators are capable of accessing the computers of the customer and provide them assistance by correcting the problems and guiding them how to use the system.

Advantages and challenges of E-Business

The usage of the emails and the private websites also acts as a method associated with the dispensing of the memos and the white sheets which are present internally. This can be considered to be another usage of the internet by the e-business. A central server or email list can be considered to be an efficient way for the distribution of the necessary information.

Conclusion:

From the above report it can be concluded that e-commerce has become an important section of our society. Along with the e-business The World Wide Web is also plays a huge role in making lives easier. Along with the development of the computer technology the e-commerce has been associated with the development of various new opportunities for different businesses. Rapid changes in the technology is associated with the bringing of new goods and services in the market which is also accompanied by new strategies for selling of this products. Besides this there exists certain ethical issues related to the emergence of the business. This issues should be identified and should be taken care of immediately. Along with the ethical issues the security issues should also be taken care off as soon as possible. Once the challenges are tackled various new opportunities arrive which helps a business to grow rapidly.

References:

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