24 Examples of Ebusiness

John Spacey, May 25, 2020

Ebusiness is any business activity that takes place over the internet or other external networks. This is a broad trend that began with the commercialization of the internet in the mid-1990s that continues to intensify to this day. Any business process can be converted to an ebusiness. For example, a firm can outsource manufacturing using electronic systems such as eprocurement. The following are common types of ebusiness activity.

Business Process Outsourcing	Communication
Competitive Intelligence	Customer Self-Service
Customer Service	Data Acquisition
Digital Advertising	Digital Marketing
Digital Markets	Digital Products
Digital Services	Ecommerce
Electronic Billing	Electronic Payments
Electronic Procurement	Infrastructure as a Service
Market Research	Partner Integration
Platform as a Service	Public Relations
Recruiting	Remote Work
Software as a Service	Work From Home

Advantages

Ebusiness is typically done to reduce costs and improve speed. Many new firms are built from the ground up on ebusiness processes such that they have nothing that depends on a physical office location or local area network. This may be fundamentally more resilient than the old model where everything was dependent on physical locations such as a head office. Ebusiness also allows for great scale of distribution and marketing. For example, selling through a global ecommerce presence as opposed to face-to-face sales that is constrained by your ability to travel to each customer and partner.

Disadvantages

There are no inherent disadvantages of ebusiness but firms often fail to implement it intelligently and well. For example, outsourcing your customer service to a partner with electronic integration can be a mistake if customer service is a potential competitive advantage. A partner doesn't know your products and culture such that it will only provide standard service where you could do much better.

Notes

Physical business activities will always exist. Products will continue to be physically manufactured and customers will continue to visit physical environments. However, the percentage of business activities that can be converted to ebusiness is extremely high. For example, a firm that develops, tests, launches, markets and supports products without every meeting in a physical office.

Overview: Ebusiness
Type	Electronic Business
Definition	Business activity that takes place over the internet or other external networks.
Also Known As	E-business Electronic Business
Related Concepts	Electronic Business » Resilience » Distribution » Ecommerce » Customer Service » Competitive Advantage »