The Challenges of E Business introduction
Presented by
M Khan

E Business is another way of connecting and giving authority to do electronic commerce, business processes, communication with customers, suppliers, distributors and other source of organisations through internet.

“E-business: a broader definition of EC, which includes:
Buying and selling of goods and services
Servicing customers
Collaborating with business partners
Conducting electronic transactions within an organization”
- Parreiras, Fernando S (NETIC)

It utilises internet, intranet, extranet and other network supports to support the processes. E business is one of the sources to create new opportunities for performing profitable activities in the internet globally. Like the traditional businesses, the ultimate goal of an E business is to create revenue and make a profit. “Over the past few years, many commentators have suggested that the Internet is one of the forces driving globalization” - Clark, George R. G (2002)

According to the author, it is apparent that the internet has improved productivity for most of the organisations that are using it. However the aim is to transform the productivity into profitability. Moreover with the help of E Business, many business to business has eliminated the middleman which cut down their costs and also do businesses internationally. Products offered by E Businesses could be physical such as clothes, hardcover books, electronics, toys etc. or digital products such as e-books, songs, software etc.

Amazon.com is one of the biggest example of E Business. It was virtually launched in July 1995 by Jeffrey Preston Bezos, the founder, president, chairman and CEO of the board of the Amazon.com which originally started as an online bookstore. Before Jeff started all this, he took a course on how to start a bookstore which was sponsored by the American Booksellers Association. After the launch of Amazon.com in United States, the site was also made available in several countries such as United Kingdom, China, Canada, Japan, France and Germany, the business approach is the same.

“If the Internet was the new rock and roll, Jeff Bezos…was its Elvis… [Today he’s] the ultimate dotcom survivor” – Lac, K (2012)

Jeff Bezos is originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico. When the store was opened, it had a certain list to follow such as be dependent on the book wholesalers and distributors to ship the orders unlike the traditional brick and mortar companies. Throughout the 1990’s the company continued to progress at a steady pace. In October, 1998, it launches first International Sites - Amazon.co.uk (UK) and Amazon.de (Germany). Amazon.com’s headquarters are in Seattle, Washington.

As stated in Seally (2000), Amazon focused on becoming the world’s largest bookstore along with selling other products and thus became the e-commerce pacesetter in the process. To many online retailers, Amazon is role model of success. “if it’s good for our customer, it’s worth doing” (Seally, 2000, p2)

“Its success has partly been based on superior order fulfilment, allied to a user-friendly interface built around its patented 1-Click technology” – Phillips (2000)

The statement suggests that Amazon is one of the most successful e-tailer in the world and due to its innovation of bringing up new technology in action which benefits customers with orders and user friendly website certainly helped to strengthen the backbone of the company. Although Amazon as a company has become the one of the top leaders in its industry, it faces problems in keeping up the momentum of introducing the innovative products at a similar pace that of the other competitors who could come up with better innovative products or services. Thereby using its customer database that provides the most complete insight into customer behaviour such as reviews left by customers of how easy was the transaction, the company will need to get ahead and address the requests or any issues that