Objectives of knowledge management

 Buy‑ side 
e‑commerce
E‑commerce transactions 
between a purchasing 
organisation and its 
suppliers.
 Sell‑ side 
e‑commerce
E‑commerce trans actions 
between a supplier 
organisation and its 
customers.
Figure 1.4
The distinction between buy‑ side and sell‑ side e‑commerce
Intranet
Digital business
Internet and
extranet
Suppliers
Key
Suppliers’ suppliers
Organisational processes
and functional units
Intermediaries
Customers
Customers’ customers
Sell-side
e-commerce
Internet and
extranet
Buy-side
e-commerce
How new is the digital business 
concept?
‘Digital business is just a new label –
there is no distinction between the 
role of digital business and traditional 
information systems management.’
Debate 1.1
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15
Chapter 1
Introduction to digital business and e‑commerce
In Figure 1.4 the key digital business processes are the organisational processes or units in 
the centre of the figure. They include research and development, marketing, manufacturing, 
and inbound and outbound logistics. The buy- side e-commerce transactions with suppliers 
and the sell- side e-commerce transactions with customers can also be considered to be key 
digital business processes. 
Intranets and extranets
The majority of Internet services are available to any business or consumer that has access 
to the Internet. However, many digital business applications that access sensitive company 
information require access to be limited to qualified individuals or partners. If information is 
restricted to employees inside an organisation, this is an 
intranet
, as is shown in Figure 1.5.
Today, the term intranet is still used, but software services similar to Twitter and Facebook 
are being implemented within companies to achieve similar goals of information sharing and 
collaboration. Mini case study 1.2 shows an example of one such 
enterprise social media 
software
tool, Yammer (Figure 1.6).
Social commerce
A subset of e‑commerce 
which encourages