E-business explained simply

What is e-business?

E-business means

• using the Internet for business purposes
• cutting costs
• reaching new customers
• making your business more
  • efficient
  • effective
  • profitable

It enables you to do the same business more cheaply; to do more of the same and make more profits; and to do business in new ways with unlimited potential. These are spelled out a little below here - for more information, help or advice, choose an e-business package or ask about the services offered by INST.

E-business can cut costs

• E-mail is cheaper and more effective than telephone or fax in many situations.
• Receiving messages electronically can save time and errors retyping the same information into your own systems.
• It is much easier and quicker to search for suppliers on the Internet, which could mean lower purchasing costs.
• Customers ordering on-line reduces sales staff costs.
• On-line catalogues are cheaper to produce and distribute than paper ones, and revisions are very easy.
• Giving information to present and potential customers on the Internet saves telephone response staff time.

E-business can reach new customers

Simply having a web site indexed on the web search engines allows people to find your company when they search the Web. This is particularly important where you have something unique to offer, or what you offer is cheaper than anyone else, or if the product or service is difficult to find in the high street or phone books - this is when increasing numbers of people turn to the Internet to search.

Links to your site from other web sites bring in people who may have been looking for something else, or just browsing the Web.

If you also make it easy to order or pay for your goods or services, by including on-line credit card payment, you may catch those busy people keen to complete and buy now. This is particularly useful for purchases of around £10 to £100, where customers are used to buying by mail order or Internet, and where the cost of dealing with a transaction personally is a substantial proportion of the total cost.

E-business techniques help you communicate and manage information

The Internet is the best medium ever invented for communicating virtually any kind of information whatever, to or from anyone else who is also connected to the Internet. This includes:

• detailed information about your products or services, to your potential customers
• information about actual or possible customers or audience, gathered from your web site
• information specific to certain client groups, customised from what they have entered or done on your web site
• information passed between users, clients etc. to help create what is known as electronic community
• information about your clients updated by themselves and shared with others in their electronic community
• information about shared business processes enabling you and independent business partners or allies to coordinate and act as a single effective company in the view of your clients (a virtual business)

Why you should let INST guide your e-business

One size does not fit all

The effectiveness of e-business depends on so many things, it needs a specialist to know the best approach for your company.

You need knowledgeable, independent guidance.

People who are trying to sell you particular "solutions" are not independent. INST can guide you through the complexities.

You want to use your knowledge and skill.

INST approaches each client with care and respect, not to impose fixed ideas, but to build together strategies that use your best ideas and merge them with the best quality insight into e-business.

You don't want to be fleeced.

INST will do just the work you need doing, in the most efficient way. We are flexible and small enough to be able to do little bits of work effectively. A light touch in the right place can make all the difference.