It aims to provide an introductory guide to key topics related to the adoption of eBusiness for smaller businesses with a view to improving your business processes and performance. It is essential for your business that you can communicate with your business contacts. More recently, our accountant has installed and fine-tuned the internet contact as a way to transfer the data he needs."
While the most common use of computers by those surveyed is for accounting, bookkeeping and (postal) invoicing, the use of the Internet by registered building practitioners is actually quite widespread. The Internet is an interconnected system or network of many thousands of academic, military, government, public and private computer systems. It is then possible to be connected to all other computer servers on the Internet anywhere in the world.
The Internet supports e-mail, the world wide web, and other more specialized eBusiness applications. E-mail (electronic mail) may consist of text and/or graphics composed and transmitted electronically from one person to another or to a group of persons via the Internet. Like your phone number, it's a good idea to have your email address printed on your business cards.
As WC Griffi n, a small painting subcontractor, tells us: “we use the Internet for business purposes related to email and banking.
What about handling money electronically?
Connecting
Growing into eBusiness
Dial-up or broadband?
A tip — Your local library can provide you with Internet access
What do I need from my Internet service provider (ISP)?
Some things to ask your prospective ISP about are
Nothing is more frustrating for most Internet users than having to wait for a website to load or, worse, receiving an error message instead. One of your main motivations for getting started with eBusiness is likely to save on some of your business costs, so costs are obviously important. You can expect that you will have to pay both the installation costs and the recurring costs for these services.
Large
What are portals?
How about an example?
Could my current or future suppliers and customers already be collected together on a portal somewhere?
Some myths dispelled
Esther Dyson
- eBusiness is not for family or small construction businesses.”
- eBusiness is risky.”
- eBusiness will only work in the long term.”
- It is too late to learn new ways of doing things.”
Although these systems are low cost, they can provide significant value to your business. Simply using electronic payment and banking systems is an important but realistic step into the eBusiness arena for smaller businesses. The risks will be reduced for businesses that are simply implementing existing proven systems, as there will be considerable industry experience and the benefits achieved by others will be known.
To further reduce the risk, companies can consider using ISPs that manage the systems, ensure secure transactions and maintain the integrity of data stored in the system. To convince yourself that this is a myth, you might want to spend some time reading some of the large number of business case studies available on the web (see, for example, www.e-businessguide.gov. ouch). It will become clear that the returns from eBusiness begin to be realized quite quickly and are likely to be significant over time.
The rapid technological advances of the past decade now mean that companies can start receiving benefits shortly after introducing eBusiness applications. The essence of eBusiness applications is that they work best when they introduce new ways of working into existing business processes. If we introduce redesigned business processes, we have the opportunity to achieve significant cost savings and efficiency gains.
Training staff and developing skills are two of the issues that companies often raise, but the advantage of eBusiness applications is that they use existing technologies, are designed for ease of use and do not require substantial training periods. Web-based eBusiness systems are no more difficult than navigating the Internet using a Web browser, so most of your staff should be able to adapt to these systems quickly.
In summary
Support for your business
What are my business processes?
What about some examples?
How can eBusiness support my business processes?
WebAlive
How can I develop new eBusiness applications?
What are the commonly used eBusiness applications in our industry?
HunterNet
What about some training?
What do clients think?
Getting started —
So how do I ensure that eBusiness will deliver value to my daily operations?
Examine the applications that existing service providers offer and measure their suitability for your specific needs. You should probably do this within your group of working collaborators in order to improve collaboration on projects. Ensure it has a customer focus that seeks to create value, transforms business processes and uses applications that are aligned with supplier and customer needs.
Examine your skills and abilities to deliver the e-business plan and work out how to acquire any skills that are not readily available. Finally, while making sure you have a narrow focus for each eBusiness design, make sure there is an overall strategy to enable the integration of each eBusiness process.
Legal and
What are the legal and security issues related to eBusiness?
Security steps
Frequently
- Is eBusiness for me?
- What are the real benefits for a small business like mine?
- Is eBusiness safe?
- How much is it going to cost me?
- Will payments be delayed?
- Will I lose my current clients?
- Will all my practices/processes be transformed?
- How will I learn to do eBusiness?
- How much support is out there?
- What if I decide not to do eBusiness?
Yes, payments may be delayed, but this is no different from your more traditional method. For example, if your project uses an eProcurement system, payments can be made directly to the company's bank accounts. The claims and approval process for an electronic system should save time as there is no need to re-enter the data into financial or accounting systems and, once approved, these systems can provide instructions on how to make payment.
You will need to review your processes and decide which ones can be improved to return value to the business and customers. At first, you can only exchange documents electronically, use internet banking and experiment with eTendering on a public or commercial construction portal. Learning together with your colleagues or your business partners is a good approach, as you can then support each other.
Where to from here?
Website addresses
