There are so many opportunities for improving your business through the use of e-commerce it is sometimes difficult to decide where and how to use them. A value chain is a way of organizing your activities to decide which areas you should focus on. The primary activities include identifying customers, overall design, supply purchasing, production, marketing, delivery, and customer support. The importance of each activity is dependent on the type of product or service you are trying to sell. Determining where your business fits in the industry is another important factor to consider when doing business on the Web. If you determine that your industry can benefit from e-commerce, it can reduce costs, improve product quality, reach new customers or suppliers, and create new ways to sell existing products. The value chain can be an excellent way to organize the business processes within the business and the product's life cycle.
Once you have identified the business's value chain, you can break it down into strategic business units and use SWOT analysis to analyze and evaluate business opportunities. SWOT involves an analyst looking into the business unit and identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and formulating strategies to take advantage of opportunities.
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