E-Business Strategy
Management Information Systems – Final Project
HEC Paris, April 2013
Group 5, Section 21
e-Business Strategy
The emergence of e-business is radically changing almost all industries ranging from retail to media. An e-business process accomplishes a given business task by using digital technologies, often based on the Internet. This can be any business tasking such as procurement, sales, HR, or other admin tasks. An e-business is a company where a significant part of its business is based on the use of e-business processes. e-Business strategy, therefore, is any particular business strategy that deals with e-business processes and / or positioning of an e-business or a company in an industry that has been significantly changed by the emergence of e-business. When examining such e-business strategies and the new ways in which companies compete we can see that some industries have been drastically changed, which poses the question of whether traditional strategy frameworks are still useful and relevant in analyzing them, as new ways of competing become successful. In this report, we take account of the literature analyzing the effects of e-business processes on companies and then analyze whether the existing framework of competitive forces, comparative advantage and positioning still applies. We will not only conclude that the framework remains unchanged, as only the parameters have changed and all new developments can be explained in the existing frameworks, but also argue that traditional industry analysis is all the more important for understanding the successes and failures in the realm of e-business.
Literature Review There is a large body of literature that suggest that the implementation of e-business processes leads to higher efficiency, payoffs, reaction speeds, better communication, and lower cost. We will now go through some of these studies and elaborate on their reasoning. It is widely acknowledged that the rapid evolution of Information
HEC Paris, April 2013
Group 5, Section 21
e-Business Strategy
The emergence of e-business is radically changing almost all industries ranging from retail to media. An e-business process accomplishes a given business task by using digital technologies, often based on the Internet. This can be any business tasking such as procurement, sales, HR, or other admin tasks. An e-business is a company where a significant part of its business is based on the use of e-business processes. e-Business strategy, therefore, is any particular business strategy that deals with e-business processes and / or positioning of an e-business or a company in an industry that has been significantly changed by the emergence of e-business. When examining such e-business strategies and the new ways in which companies compete we can see that some industries have been drastically changed, which poses the question of whether traditional strategy frameworks are still useful and relevant in analyzing them, as new ways of competing become successful. In this report, we take account of the literature analyzing the effects of e-business processes on companies and then analyze whether the existing framework of competitive forces, comparative advantage and positioning still applies. We will not only conclude that the framework remains unchanged, as only the parameters have changed and all new developments can be explained in the existing frameworks, but also argue that traditional industry analysis is all the more important for understanding the successes and failures in the realm of e-business.
Literature Review There is a large body of literature that suggest that the implementation of e-business processes leads to higher efficiency, payoffs, reaction speeds, better communication, and lower cost. We will now go through some of these studies and elaborate on their reasoning. It is widely acknowledged that the rapid evolution of Information
Bibliography: Barua, A., Konana, P., Whinston, A.B. and Yin, F. (2004), “An empirical investigation of net-enabled business value”, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 585-620. Cagliano, R., Caniato, F. and Spina, G. (2003), “E-business strategy: how companies are shaping their supply chain through the Internet”, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 23 No. 10, pp. 1142-62.