Chapter XIV. E-Technology: E-Business, Intranet, Extranet, Internet

Globalisation, modernisation and streamlining paradigms have driven many enterprises to use various e-Technologies in order to improve the performance of existing operations, and compete globally and strategically to enhance manufacturing enterprise competitiveness, which in today's digital economy, is often networked and interconnected via the Internet, Intranet, and Extranet. Examples of the e-Technology include e-Commerce, e-Business, e-Procurement and e-Logistics. These technologies are in place to support the notion of establishing a value-added e-Supply chain and e-Demand chain. The support of back office systems, e.g. Supply Chain Management (SCM), Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) are crucial to enable seamless information flow in the supply chain, whilst support from front-office systems, e.g. Customer Relationships Management (CRM), is important to coordinate the demand chain. Appropriate alignment of the e-Technology with the systems is expected to create further competitive advantages. Hence, e-Technology is a core competence in contributing to competitiveness in the digital economy. It is not merely a facilitating enabler, but a critical enabler towards globalization. (Ketikidis et al, 2006)