Introduction

The way business is carried on has changed fundamentally over the last decade or so. The manner in which business is conducted is called the mode of business, and the word 'emerging' signals that these changes are happening right now and are likely to continue.

If we were to pick the three strongest trends reshaping business today, they would be:

• Digitisation — a term borrowed from electronics, meaning the conversion of text, sound, images, video and other content into a series of ones and zeroes that can be transmitted electronically.
• Outsourcing — getting work done through outside agencies rather than doing everything in-house.
• Internationalisation and globalisation — the spread of business across national boundaries (international business is taken up separately in Chapter 11).

This chapter focuses on the first two developments: the digitisation of business, also called electronic business (e-business), and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).

These newer modes are not a new kind of business — they are new ways of doing business. They have arisen from several factors. Business, as an activity, aims at creating utilities or value in the form of goods and services that households and industrial buyers purchase to meet their needs and wants. In their effort to improve business processes — whether purchase and production, marketing, finance or human resources — managers and business thinkers keep evolving newer and better ways of working. Firms must continually strengthen their ability to create utilities and deliver value in order to survive competitive pressure and satisfy consumers who increasingly demand better quality, lower prices, speedier deliveries and better customer care. The desire to gain from emerging technologies means that business keeps evolving.

The chapter opens with a small scene: Rita wakes her village friend Rekha well past midnight to 'go shopping'. A puzzled Rekha asks who would keep a shop open at that hour — until Rita explains she means online shopping over the internet. Rekha, who has heard of online shopping but never tried it, wonders what is sold online, how it is delivered, how payment is made, and why the internet is not yet as popular in villages. As she puzzles over these questions, Rita has already logged on to one of India's largest online shopping malls.