Successful e-busines

"E-business is essentially any business activity that uses technology as an enabler... in modern business environments it's almost all business activities. This is, however, many Small to Medium Enterprises (SME's) that can use e-business principals in their operations - saving time and money in the process!"  E-Business has worked with client companies in developing cost effective; high performing technologies and related practices that have enabled SME's to compete with larger companies, often located in metropolitan centres within Australia and also within international marketplaces.

E-business covers online transactions, but also extends to all Internets based interactions with business partners, suppliers and customers such as: selling direct to consumers, manufacturers and suppliers; monitoring and exchanging information; auctioning surplus inventory; and collaborative product design. These online interactions are aimed at improving or transforming business processes and efficiency.

These are some benefits of an e-business:

1. Improved accuracy, quality and time required for updating & delivering information on products.
2. Access for customers to catalogues and prices - 24 hours and 7 days in a week, means access available every day.                                              
3. Improved case, speed and immediacy of customer ordering.  
4. Enhanced market, industry or competitor intelligence acquired through information gathering and research  activities. 
5.  New distribution channels via the electronic delivery of some products and services, for example, product design collaboration, publications, software, translation services, banking.
6. Expansion of customer base and growth in export opportunity.
7. Reduces routine administrative tasks (invoices and order records) freeing staff to focus on more strategic activities.

Summary

This is the summarisation of E- business research topic called “The Impact of E-Business on Accounting and Accounting Education”.  

One of the central facts in the evolution of e-business has been the integration of systems. Data have been made available throughout enterprises by using business various systems, including enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and e-procurement. The flow of e-business increased in velocity, making even these integrated systems too slow to meet the pace of demand. Business then found it necessary to turn to new ways to speed up the availability of data. Many have turned to the use of extensible Mark up Language, which is a tool allowing data to be coded or tagged in such a way that the nature of the data can be identified by the tag descriptions and quickly retrieved from data bases for immediate consumption. Rapid reporting has emerged from recent legislative requirements to report information in a very short time frame, in many cases by the day after an event has taken place. Another trend that is having a considerable impact on financial accounting is that of enhanced reporting and Accountants become managers of information both internally  and externally.                                                                                                                                                 

"Instance documents" are documents that assemble the tagged data that are needed for a particular purpose. For example, an instance document for an income statement would contain a listing of all the tagged data that would go into an income statement. Instance documents are not reader-friendly; they are intended to be read by other computer programs, such as spreadsheets or word-processing applications. Microsoft has introduced XBRL into the new version of the Office software to make it easy for users to make use of instance documents. As explained in the Microsoft XBRL website.

Critical thinking:

  

The Office Tool for XBRL Prototype uses the power of smart document functionality in Microsoft Office Professional Edition to enable to create XBRL documents. For example:                                              

• Easily import and modify existing XBRL documents or quickly transform documents into XBRL format.
• Use either Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel to create an XBRL document.
• Export a document to the XBRL format.

Audit and Control Implications of XBRL, In addition, the main website for XBRL10 contains a wealth of information about XBRL. A forthcoming research study of the CICA shows that XBRL is being adopted by numerous organizations around the world for the purposes of electronic filing of information with agencies and government departments. It is one of the major data-centric technologies in use. Others, such as ebXML and XML itself, are also gaining in use. And it is an impact of data-centric technologies on accounting.

 References:

Laudon, Jane P. and Kenneth C. Laudon (2009): Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, NJ, Prentice Hall.

Stair, Ralph and George Reynolds (2008): Fundamentals of Information Systems, USA, Course Technology.

Funk, J. T. (2007). A descriptive study of retention of adult online learners: a model of interventions to prevent attrition.(Dissertation Abstracts International), 68(1). (UMI No. 3249896).

Driggs, W. (2007, September), The true drivers of loyalty, Customer Relationship Management, 11(9), 48.

http://search.proquest.com/docview/201693286?accountid.