e-Business Tools

Businesses exist to deliver value to their shareholders. Only projects that deliver value should be approved, and that includes projects that electronically enable collaboration with other parties (with or without standards).

Why Electronically Enable Business?

Businesses deliver value by completing several, or all, of the following activites: identifying buyers and suppliers

• identifying and sharing product information
• making commitments to buy and sell products
• manufacturing products and/or building/maintaining service capacity
• delivering and receiving products
• delivering and receiving remuneration

Each of these activities relies upon two or more parties exchanging information. It would be unthinkable to engage in these activites without support of some electronic means - telephone, fax, email, and/or electronic messaging (e.g., EDI). By electronically enabling business we are specifically referring to implementing capability for enterprise business systems to automatically execute the above activites with reduced or no human intervention. Reducing or eliminating human intervention in various activities reduces labor costs. Furthermore, general electronically enabled processes deliver higher quality and more timely information which in turn enables systems or people to take action to reduce excess inventory, deliver sufficient inventory to meet demand, sell more products, etc.