E-business models utilize advanced communication technologies and digital information to streamline various business processes online. These processes include customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management, payment processing, employee services and recruitment, and information sharing.
Understanding E-business models
E-business models are used by companies to create value and become profitable online.
E-business models were developed in response to the increasing prevalence and technological capabilities of the internet.
Seemingly overnight, the internet removed geographical barriers and allowed businesses to operate wherever it was available.
Businesses can now enter new markets with ease and can be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for very little outlay.
This shift has resulted in four broad transformations:
Domestic business to multinational business.
An economy based on industrial manufacturing to one that characterized by knowledge-based services.
Enterprise resource management to enterprise network management, and
Manual, document-driven business processes to those that are electronic, automated, and paperless.
With e-business models developed to take advantage of these transformations, they have virtually rendered traditional models of organizational design obsolete.
The four components of E-business models
In general terms, E-business models should have four components:
The Value Proposition Canvas, part of the Business Model Canvas, is a tool used to ensure a product or service is positioned around customer values and needs.
Advances in IT and communications have enabled many E-businesses to create and deliver various forms of customer value.
For example, Dell uses the internet to sell customizable, direct-to-consumer PCs.
Other companies offer value in the form of reduced prices, fast delivery, or access to more diverse inventories.
Customer relationships
There is a limit to how much an offline business can interact with its customers.
For the e-business, however, customer relationships have benefitted from data collection, increased communication, order tracking, and personalized support.
Revenue modeling is a process of incorporating a sustainable financial model for revenue generation within a business model design. Revenue modeling can help to understand what options make more sense in creating a digital business from scratch; alternatively, it can help in analyzing existing digital businesses and reverse engineer them.
When clarifying revenue streams, it’s important to look beyond obvious sources of income such as eCommerce.
Other sources include advertising, licensing, sales commissions, syndication, subscription, and sponsorship.
Activities, capabilities, and resources
Like traditional business models, e-business models must define how the mission or vision of the company will be carried out and how much it will cost.
Some of these methods may be patented – such as Amazon’s 1-click checkout process – while others can be utilized for free.
E-business models also place more of an emphasis on less tangible resources such as intellectual property, software, customer data, and other IT infrastructure.
E-business model types
A digital business model might be defined as a model that leverages digital technologies to improve several aspects of an organization. From how the company acquires customers, to what product/service it provides. A digital business model is such when digital technology helps enhance its value proposition.
Let’s conclude by taking a look at some common e-business model types categorized according to functionality and transaction type.
Functionality
Community model – a model used by Facebook, Wikipedia, and Flickr where communities share information, photos, or opinions. Revenue is earned via donations, advertising, and subscriptions.
Advertising model – where businesses such as newspapers and journals provide content to readers and serve ads to generate revenue.
Brokerage model – companies such as eBay and Amazon make money by bringing buyers and sellers together.
Transaction type
Business-to-consumer (B2C) – where merchants sell products and services to buyers who then purchase them online.
Business-to-business (B2B) – electronic transactions that occur between two businesses. Many SaaS companies follow this model.
Consumer-to-business (C2B) – the reverse of B2C where consumers sell to businesses. A freelance graphic designer may sell a logo to a company, for example.
Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) – this model is prevalent on online auction sites and other marketplaces for consumers.
Business-to-government (B2G) – where government procures products, services, or information from external contractors. For example, governments that require city and open space maintenance will solicit these services from private companies.
Key takeaways:
E-business models are used by companies to create value and become profitable online. These models have taken advantage of the proliferation and technological advancement of the internet, rendering offline models almost obsolete.
Most e-business models will incorporate four components: value proposition, customer relationships, revenue streams, and activities, capabilities, and resources.
Various e-business model types have been developed over the years. In terms of functionality, some examples include the community model, advertising model, and brokerage model. The ever-evolving and diverse transaction types include B2C, B2B, C2B, C2C, and C2G.
An effective business model has to focus on two dimensions: the people dimension and the financial dimension. The people dimension will allow you to build a product or service that is 10X better than existing ones and a solid brand. The financial dimension will help you develop proper distribution channels by identifying the people that are willing to pay for your product or service and make it financially sustainable in the long run.
Business model innovation is about increasing the success of an organization with existing products and technologies by crafting a compelling value proposition able to propel a new business model to scale up customers and create a lasting competitive advantage. And it all starts by mastering the key customers.
Digital and tech business models can be classified according to four levels of transformation into digitally-enabled, digitally-enhanced, tech or platform business models, and business platforms/ecosystems.
A digital business model might be defined as a model that leverages digital technologies to improve several aspects of an organization. From how the company acquires customers, to what product/service it provides. A digital business model is such when digital technology helps enhance its value proposition.
A tech business model is made of four main components: value model (value propositions, mission, vision), technological model (R&D management), distribution model (sales and marketing organizational structure), and financial model (revenue modeling, cost structure, profitability and cash generation/management). Those elements coming together can serve as the basis to build a solid tech business model.
A platform business model generates value by enabling interactions between people, groups, and users by leveraging network effects. Platform business models usually comprise two sides: supply and demand. Kicking off the interactions between those two sides is one of the crucial elements for a platform business model success.
A Blockchain Business Model is made of four main components: Value Model (Core Philosophy, Core Value and Value Propositions for the key stakeholders), Blockchain Model (Protocol Rules, Network Shape and Applications Layer/Ecosystem), Distribution Model (the key channels amplifying the protocol and its communities), and the Economic Model (the dynamics through which protocol players make money). Those elements coming together can serve as the basis to build and analyze a solid Blockchain Business Model.
In an asymmetric businessmodel, the organization doesn’t monetize the user directly, but it leverages the data users provide coupled with technology, thus have a key customer pay to sustain the core asset. For example, Google makes money by leveraging users’ data, combined with its algorithms sold to advertisers for visibility.
In an asymmetric businessmodel, the organization doesn’t monetize the user directly, but it leverages the data users provide coupled with technology, thus having a key customer pay to sustain the core asset. For example, Google makes money by leveraging users’ data, combined with its algorithms sold to advertisers for visibility. This is how attention merchants make monetize their business models.
While the term has been coined by Andrew Lampitt, open-core is an evolution of open-source. Where a core part of the software/platform is offered for free, while on top of it are built premium features or add-ons, which get monetized by the corporation who developed the software/platform. An example of the GitLab open core model, where the hosted service is free and open, while the software is closed.
Cloud business models are all built on top of cloud computing, a concept that took over around 2006 when former Google’s CEO Eric Schmit mentioned it. Most cloud-based business models can be classified as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), or SaaS (Software as a Service). While those models are primarily monetized via subscriptions, they are monetized via pay-as-you-go revenue models and hybrid models (subscriptions + pay-as-you-go).
Open source is licensed and usually developed and maintained by a community of independent developers. While the freemium is developed in-house. Thus the freemium give the company that developed it, full control over its distribution. In an open-source model, the for-profit company has to distribute its premium version per its open-source licensing model.
The freemium – unless the whole organization is aligned around it – is a growth strategy rather than a business model. A free service is provided to a majority of users, while a small percentage of those users convert into paying customers through the sales funnel. Free users will help spread the brand through word of mouth.
A freeterprise is a combination of free and enterprise where free professional accounts are driven into the funnel through the free product. As the opportunity is identified the company assigns the free account to a salesperson within the organization (inside sales or fields sales) to convert that into a B2B/enterprise account.
A marketplace is a platform where buyers and sellers interact and transact. The platform acts as a marketplace that will generate revenues in fees from one or all the parties involved in the transaction. Usually, marketplaces can be classified in several ways, like those selling services vs. products or those connecting buyers and sellers at B2B, B2C, or C2C level. And those marketplaces connecting two core players, or more.
B2B, which stands for business-to-business, is a process for selling products or services to other businesses. On the other hand, a B2C sells directly to its consumers.
A B2B2C is a particular kind of business model where a company, rather than accessing the consumer market directly, it does that via another business. Yet the final consumers will recognize the brand or the service provided by the B2B2C. The company offering the service might gain direct access to consumers over time.
Direct-to-consumer (D2C) is a business model where companies sell their products directly to the consumer without the assistance of a third-party wholesaler or retailer. In this way, the company can cut through intermediaries and increase its margins. However, to be successful the direct-to-consumers company needs to build its own distribution, which in the short term can be more expensive. Yet in the long-term creates a competitive advantage.
The C2C business model describes a market environment where one customer purchases from another on a third-party platform that may also handle the transaction. Under the C2C model, both the seller and the buyer are considered consumers. Customer to customer (C2C) is, therefore, a business model where consumers buy and sell directly between themselves. Consumer-to-consumer has become a prevalent business model especially as the web helped disintermediate various industries.
A retail business model follows a direct-to-consumer approach, also called B2C, where the company sells directly to final customers a processed/finished product. This implies a business model that is mostly local-based, it carries higher margins, but also higher costs and distribution risks.
The wholesale model is a selling model where wholesalers sell their products in bulk to a retailer at a discounted price. The retailer then on-sells the products to consumers at a higher price. In the wholesale model, a wholesaler sells products in bulk to retail outlets for onward sale. Occasionally, the wholesaler sells direct to the consumer, with supermarket giant Costco the most obvious example.
The term “crowdsourcing” was first coined by Wired Magazine editor Jeff Howe in a 2006 article titled Rise of Crowdsourcing. Though the practice has existed in some form or another for centuries, it rose to prominence when eCommerce, social media, and smartphone culture began to emerge. Crowdsourcing is the act of obtaining knowledge, goods, services, or opinions from a group of people. These people submit information via social media, smartphone apps, or dedicated crowdsourcing platforms.
In a franchained business model (a short-term chain, long-term franchise) model, the company deliberately launched its operations by keeping tight ownership on the main assets, while those are established, thus choosing a chain model. Once operations are running and established, the company divests its ownership and opts instead for a franchising model.
Businesses employing the brokerage business model make money via brokerage services. This means they are involved with the facilitation, negotiation, or arbitration of a transaction between a buyer and a seller. The brokerage business model involves a business connecting buyers with sellers to collect a commission on the resultant transaction. Therefore, acting as a middleman within a transaction.
Dropshipping is a retail business model where the dropshipper externalizes the manufacturing and logistics and focuses only on distribution and customer acquisition. Therefore, the dropshipper collects final customers’ sales orders, sending them over to third-party suppliers, who ship directly to those customers. In this way, through dropshipping, it is possible to run a business without operational costs and logistics management.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
