Wang & Nah 1 Chapter 1 ERP + E-Business = A New Vision of Enterprise System Betty Wang and Fui Hoon (Fiona) Nah University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA Previously published in Managing Internet and Intranet Technologies in Organizations: Challenges and Opportunities edited by Subhasish Dasgupta ©2001. INTRODUCTION Companies have invested billions of dollars collectively in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems with the objective of attaining an important business promise — complete enterprise integration. For companies faced with incompatible information systems and inconsistent operating practices, ERP has been a dream come true. ERP presents companies with the opportu- nity to standardize and automate business processes throughout the organiza- tions, thus increasing productivity and reducing cycle time. Although ERP systems have delivered value, it is becoming clear that the ERP model, which wraps organizational processes into one end-to-end application, may no longer be sufficient for today’s fast-moving, extended enterprises. With the rapid growth of the Internet, the business environment has changed dramatically. The world has become a global marketplace. According to Gartner Group, the worldwide business-to-business (B2B) market is forecasted to grow from 145 billion in 1999 to 7.29 trillion in 2004 (King, 2000). E-business has changed the definition of enterprise systems. Beyond the core business functions that ERP has traditionally focused on, e-business pushes the ERP from the inside core of the companies to the network edge. Companies are realizing that the most challenging part of e-business initia- tives is not in developing a Web storefront but in extending ERP to accom- plish business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) solutions.