Application Convergence and e-Business - 4 : Overview
Full playlist "#Application #Convergence" discusses how convergence enables e-business applications. Identifies some practices and applications that benefit from convergence, e.g., CRM, #ERP, contact centers, and unified messaging.
• 53 : Application Convergence - Fundam...
e-Business, which is also called e-commerce, is a word that you may have heard before. I know I've used it in these lessons, because it is a major trend in business today. e-Business is a broad term that encompasses everything involved with buying and selling electronically. e-Business often involves shopping for items on the Internet, but it also covers email and other electronic means of communication. The idea with e-business is that the Internet makes it easier for customers to shop and easier for companies to sell.
e-Business has many benefits, and the most obvious one is convenience. Customers can shop online 24 hours a day, sitting at home in their pajamas. The Internet has also opened up more places to shop, because when you're online, you're not limited to shopping at stores that are in walking or driving distance - you can be in New York shopping for jeans in Paris, or you can do all your Christmas shopping on your lunch hour at work. Having more places to shop also helps customers find better prices, because there are more options and more competition.
The conveniences that customers enjoy through e-business are advantages for companies, too. E-Business web sites don't close when the mall does - they're open 24 hours a day, and they have customers from around the world. Also, online stores are able to gather demographic information about their customers when they make online transactions, and this is important for marketing and advertising efforts. This is a major advantage of online business, since it's not possible to track things like names, addresses, and buying habits of a customer who walks into a store and pays with cash.
In the following scenes, we'll discuss some e-business practices that are enabled or improved through convergence.