The internet has greatly transformed the way companies conduct business today. In fact, the internet has created an entirely new business function referred to as e-commerce which involves the use of internet and other business-technologies in company operations. in fact, businesses no-longer depend on a local-customer base for survival like in the past  and this is mainly because the internet has changed the way companies market themselves in-order to get a wider customer-base than never before.

Positive Effect of the Internet on Modern Businesses & Corporations:

1. Improved Communication: The internet features several communication-tools that greatly changed the way businesses communicate with customers, associates and employees. For example, Emails and instant-messaging services have facilitated for quick and easy business-communication like never before. On the other hand, newer communicating tools like chat-software and social-media networks have allowed business to communicate easily to wider audience which is a great thing.
2. Remote operation: Today, many businesses are offering an option for their employees to work from home using office equipment provided by the company. In fact, this is referred to as telecommuting and actually helps businesses to reduce on overhead costs by simply needing less office-space and using fewer utilities for daily operation.
3. Easy outsourcing of new skilled employees: with the use of internet, businesses can easily outsource skilled employees’ in order to accomplish certain complicated tasks within a company. For example, Free-Lancer.com hosts different experts that can be easily hired by companies to carryout complicated tasks like online-marketing, online-advertisement and website-development but at an affordable cost.
4. Improved Marketing strategies: with the use of internet-marketing, businesses are able to reach a wider customer-base easily and faster at an affordable cost. In fact, competition in no-longer localized whereby businesses can now compete others all over the world like never before. For example, companies today are using social-media platforms and other online-service to market their products or services to different customers all-over the world.
5. Improved Advertisement: The internet actually offers several advertisement-tools that can be used by businesses to attract new customer all over the world. For example, Google-Adwords, Facebook-marketing, websites, banner-placements are some of the best advertisement-tools on the internet that will enable all businesses to have a presence on the Web and even reach millions of potential customers.
6. Improved collaboration: with the use of the internet, working with other businesses and professional is simplified through the use of internet-seminars (webinars). In fact, there are also other internet technologies that make it easy collaborating projects with other people all over the world like; Skype, online-video-conferencing software and a lot more.
7. Improved research within businesses: Businesses can use the internet to research on new-product-ideas, new methods of producing products and pricing information. On the other hand, small-businesses can also make research on their competitors’ in order to know the products and services they offer. Additionally, if a company wants to expand its reach into particular locations, then the internet can be used as a researching-tool for the population, its needs and what services of products could sell best in such areas.
8. Easy monitoring of business operations: The internet features different tools that allow business-owners to easily manage business-operations anywhere. For example, business-owner can stay in real-time contact with his office or clients through online-chats and even exchange important information with clients from anywhere around the world. So, this has allowed business-owners to pursue other business-opportunities while still maintaining control over their existing businesses.
9. It allows small-businesses to compete with large-corporations: With the use of the internet, small-businesses can get instant access to information about new products, services and technological advances so that they can easily compete with larger-companies on the same market.
10. Improved financial transactions: The internet also offers various tools and services that can be used businesses to process financial transactions easily. For example, today companies are using online-payment-services like internet-banking, PayPal, Visa-cards and a lot more to help customers make remote payments and to facilitate for quick and easy transactions between businesses.

Negative Effect of the Internet on Modern Businesses & Corporations:

• Pressure on maintaining online-sales and online-customers: Today, the internet has led to a rise in online-shopping compared to traditional local-shopping. So, Business-owners with both retail-locations and online stores are on pressure of finding a balance between customers who prefer traditional-shopping and those who like the convenience of online-shopping but this is not an easy task for any business to accomplish.
• Increased Competition: the internet has also led to an increase in competition to many areas of business because of the many new-businesses joining the internet on a daily basis. In fact, today anyone can offer his/her products and services online through different methods thus increasing on the number of new-merchants to the global online-marketplace thus creating a challenge of retaining customers or risk of being driven-out of business by existing businesses.
• It has led to Obsolescence of certain services and products: with the use of internet today, some products and services are quickly becoming obsolete like; stock-brokers, travel-agents and even the post offices leading to a collapse of businesses in these fields and an increase in unemployment-levels. In fact, such services have been replaced by digital-services like stock-websites, travel-websites and e-mail-websites.
• A rise in unemployment levels: The automation of internet has actually led to an elimination of countless-jobs. In fact, businesses use the internet to simplify and streamline their operations and this implies that few employees will be required to accomplish certain complicated tasks. For example, automated online system can sort data or answer customers’ questions and this implies that human-labor will be unnecessary.
• Increased security risks in business: for any business operating over internet, security and confidentiality will become a major concern. In fact, businesses spend a lot of money on security-effort in order to ensure that transactions are safe so that customers feel comfortable conducting business online. Additionally, major security treats like hackers, viruses and e-terrorism can lead to collapse of different online-businesses.
• Reduced productivity of employees at work: Today, most employees tend to spend a lot of working-time replying personal mails, chatting, watching online videos and web-surfing which leads to a decrease in productivity at work. In fact, this can affect the company in the way it provides services to its customer leading a decline in sales in the long-run.
• Failure to maintain current technologies by businesses: There are always new online-technologies rising on the market and this implies that some businesses may fail to keep-up with current-technologies allowing the competitor to use create a competitive advantage in the economic marketplace by simply implementing and investing in a new internet-based technology.