- Advertise to the customers
- Provide online purchasing and self service capabilities
- Provide an entry to call centers and customer support
- Facilitate sales and marketing analysis through “click stream mining” – mining of click streams collected when the users click on various pages
Enterprise reliance on Web has gone through several stages of evolution from (see Figure):
Stage 1: Simple Web sites (Advertise only). This stage became popular in the mid 1990s and is still the foundation of many corporate Web sites. The basic idea is to use the Web sites to display/advertise company products through HTML/XML (called static content). All other company operations are largely unaffected. For example, the customers have to separately order the products that they select by browsing through company Web sites.
Stage 2: Basic e-Commerce (Online Purchasing through Web storefronts). In this stage, the consumers could select the products through the Internet and then also buy them from a single organization. In this case the service is not only advertised but also delivered over the Internet. In addition, the Web is used as an interface to corporate applications (i.e., new applications are developed by using the Web and existing applications are given “face lifts” by using the Web).
Stage 3: Extended Enterprises (B2B Direct). EEs (Extended Enterprises) go beyond basic e-commerce sites by tying services from multiple businesses through a single Web interface. In this stage, Web technologies take a central role in gluing services across multiple organizational units spanning different organizations. It adds B2B interactions to C2B as encountered in the previous two stages. The B2B interactions, although hidden from the users, take place directly between business partners. This stage, popular at the turn of the 21st century, is at the core of contemporary e-business activities like online shopping, trading between business partners, and integration of business processes across organizational boundaries (e.g., workflows across organization storefronts for online purchasing through IT). An example of extended enterprises, also known as virtual enterprises, is Amazon.com (when you order a book from Amazon.com, many other suppliers may be involved in this transaction).
Stage 4: Next Generation Enterprises (NGEs). This stage goes beyond stage 3 to add intermediaries (trading hubs, e-markets), real-time business monitoring and control, mobility, self-serve customers, and other features. In this stage, gaining popularity at the time of this writing as "real-time enterprises", the interactions between business activities within an enterprise are conducted, monitored, and controlled electronically. In addition, external communications with business partners are conducted through trading networks that support B2N (business to network) interactions. The Internet-based IT infrastructure becomes the primary source of company business in this model. In fact, NGEs rely almost exclusively on the Internet-based IT infrastructure to conduct business and often result in restructuring and transformation of the industry.
At present, most organizations use websites for advertising and as web storefronts.
