Understanding E-Business Models

While different entities have different reasons for entering the world of e-business, they all have business models that are suited to their individual needs. This paper will focus on three web sites that have different business models and examine how these models are defined by the entity. The first entity is United States Steel and they have a Business-to-Business (B2B) extranet web site for their partners and customers. The second entity that will be examined is the state of Pennsylvania. They have an extensive web site with many features. In order to limit the scope of this paper, only the Department of Transportation will be examined. The final entity that will be examined is Staples, who have both Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumers.

United States Steel

United States Steel (USS) is currently the largest integrated steel producer in the United States (United States Steel, 2004). They not only compete in the world markets, but they also have facilities in several other countries as well. In order to facilitate communications among partners and customers, USS created SteelTrack, the U.S. Steel Eextranet.

SteelTrack is a full featured extranet that allows both USS partners and USS business customers to access real-time information from USS. For USS partners, this information includes work orders, shipping and receiving information, and other items that the partner might need. For business customers, Steeltrack provides order status information, the ability to retrieve Certified Material Test Reports, shipping information, and it allows the customers the ability to reserve stock material from USS plants.

Because this extranet is only available to USS customers or partners, this site is not marketed to the general public. USS partners and customers are told about this site from either their customer service representatives or from personnel involved with the partners. In addition, there is a link to this site from the main USS Internet web site.