E-business – still a novelty, or already a common practice?

The paper was presented at the Polish Logistics Congress “Logistics 2006 – Best Practices in Logistics”. Poznań, May 10-12, 2006.

To answer the question posed in the topic, one should first define what the term e-business means and what relationships exist with concepts such as e-commerce or e-economy.
Thus, e-business (electronic business) is a term introduced for the first time by IBM in the mid-90s, meaning, in its simplest form, conducting business using broadly understood ICT solutions, in particular those based on internet applications. E-business is more than e-commerce (electronic commerce) because it does not refer only to transactions: “buying”, “selling”, but covers business processes along the entire value chain: electronic procurement (e-procurement) and supply chain management, electronic order processing, customer service, and cooperation with business partners (Fig. 1).
Inseparably connected with e-business is the term interoperability, which we can speak of in two aspects, as:

– technical interoperability, which defines how different software in different companies can interact;
– business interoperability, called collaboration, which defines how different enterprises can align their individual business processes in order to carry them out electronically. This issue concerns not only semantics but also culture, language, business practices, or legislative and corporate policy.

Practical implementation of e-business is supported by various types of IT solutions that allow for the integration of internal and external business processes of a company. Dividing them into three groups, we get:
a) internal business systems, implementing: customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), knowledge management, workflow management, employee information portal, document management systems, human resources management, process execution control, internal transaction handling;
b) communication and collaboration systems, implementing: content management system, email and voice mail support, discussion forum support, online conversation support (chat systems), online conferences, online collaborative work systems;
c) B2B and B2C e-commerce systems, supporting: electronic funds transfer, supply chain management (SCM), e-marketing, online marketing, online transactions, downloading online electronic products.

Fig. 1. Economic processes of enterprises supported by electronic economy tools.
Source: own materials of ILiM.

The market for IT products located in the above-mentioned areas is broad, which – as research confirms – does not translate into their widespread implementation in enterprises and their environment.
Moreover, year after year, many entities, before deciding to enter the path of the electronic economy, try to find an answer to a number of fundamental questions related to electronic business, such as:

– is there sufficient technical infrastructure for the implementation of modern IT solutions?

– are my customers (current and potential), as well as business partners, ready for changes?

– what barriers might I encounter?

– has the legal environment been prepared appropriately?

– to what extent is my company able to adapt to new operating conditions?

– what costs must be incurred and what benefits can be achieved?

– in a word, has the moment arrived when I should board the train called electronic business, whose final destination is the electronic economy?
It is difficult to find a ready-made and unambiguous answer to such a question. Certainly, some clues can be sought in the analysis of statistical research results devoted to phenomena related to the broadly understood information society.
In the further part of the paper, based on the cited statistical data, an attempt will be made to find an answer to the question of what the current state of e-business in Poland is and where we are compared to other countries.
First, let us try to answer the question of whether society, business entities, and the business environment in Poland are prepared infrastructurally for operations in completely different conditions. In electronic business, after all, we are dealing with a situation where, by the nature of things, we must break with habits, the existing way of operating, the widespread “materiality” of information (the omnipresence of paper documents), limitations of place and time, or the personal form of contacts.