What is the difference between E-commerce and E-business?

The need of the hour is to seize the power of web and streamline the technology potential to your business needs. Commerce and business are often used interchangeably; here the prefix ‘e-’ is used for electronic means electronic commerce and electronic business. But in this business world both hold completely different meanings. E-commerce is a subset of e-business, and is an e-business segment that holds the financial change within the business boundaries. E-commerce is e-business but e-business may or may not be e-commerce.

To promote your business, i.e. sell your product or services online you maintain a website, just having a web site online won’t work, starting from online visibility to brand awareness and ultimately maximizing ROI is the main aim behind running an online storefront. E-commerce is all about buying and selling over the internet. Apart from buying and selling of products online, a business analyst needs to implement other business strategies to run a successful business, this is the vertex where e-business begins. It is a business ambience created by integrating all the business systems. Here, all the business elements are connected to each other and web also. This requires 100% collaboration among each element and network. Have you ever thought that to buy and sell products online what all are essential??? Would having a great product do all? Obviously No!! Effective marketing strategies, excellent customer service, solid infrastructure, real time information systems are required to make complete utilization of available internet resources; you must not confuse with E-commerce and E-business.

An E-business platform helps companies to provide good customer services, strong marketing presence, prompt delivery, reliable inventory control and access to real time information. E-business includes following segments: eCommerce, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management, Knowledge Management, Business Intelligence, Collaborative Technologies.

Benefits from having right e-business strategies are you improve your business performance, additional revenue in form of new business, new customers, new products by opening new channels and connectivity at low cost (by reducing complexity) utilizing the latest technologies in the value chain to connect the value chains across businesses. You also gain productive insight and strong brand awarness.