Top 10 ways e-business is changing your life in the
enterprise
New technologies offer plenty of opportunitiesif you
can meet the technical and business challenges
By Shari L. Jones
Defining e-business requires few words, yet the
definition is replete with meaning: e-business is the use of
Internet-based computing to transform strategic business processes.
However simple the definition, e-business technologies are impacting the
enterprise in positive and not-so-subtle ways.
Numerous IT vendors have tapped into this rapidly
emerging market, allowing organizations to conduct business around the
clock. Compaq and Microsoft Corp., for example, are joining forces to make
e-business technologies readily available to enterprises, even those with
legacy systems firmly in place. The two IT organizations provide
integrated solutions for e-business, using Microsoft's Windows NT on
Compaq systems.
 This article will explore the top 10 ways e-business is changing
life in the enterprise. We'll also consider solutions from both Microsoft
and Compaq that ease the migration from a traditional business model to an
e-business model.
1. Your competition is just a click away This
may sound like a cliché, but the threat is very real. Before the advent of
e-business, your customers had to drive from store to store, make multiple
phone calls, or walk door to door to find the best buy. Now, they simply
click the mouse button. If your competition is set up with a Web site that
makes the transaction quick, efficient, and easy, and your Internet
presence is lacking, you've lost a sale.
E-business breaks the time barrier of traditional
commerce, which means customer loyalty is easily influenced by the right
technology. You must be willing to engage your customers in the most
efficient, least time-consuming, and most customer-friendly way.
Vendors like Cisco have demonstrated e-business to
their customers. A segment of the company's markets are call-in orders,
but the majority of its sales effort is Web-based. Buying is made easy.
When purchasing hardware, customers are notified immediately if they enter
incorrect or conflicting information.
To really be ahead of the game, all departments in your
enterprise must be in sync and geared to providing one thing: e-service.
Your service and support must be twice as dependable as it was before you
implemented Web-based commerce.
More than ever, all business processes should work
together to make the sale. For example, the promotions or marketing
department must be notified when specific hardware is sold through the
purchasing department, so incentives or coupons for future purchases will
be included with the delivered product. All departments must work in
harmony to gain customer loyalty.
2. Let the customer serve himself E-business
allows your customers to serve themselves. They are no longer calling on
you to serve them, thus shifting the ownership of service. The customer
chooses your Web site to make a purchase; from that point it is your job
to ensure he is led through the sales process in a satisfactory manner. If
you succeed, he'll return as loyal customer.
One way to foster customer loyalty is to implement
technologies that enable you to learn your individual customers' buying
patterns; as a result, you'll be able to better guide them through the
sales cycle. For example, an online stock brokerage firm might track the
stock purchasing patterns of individual customers through Web-based
software that profiles and logs their buying patterns. Such software
allows you to tailor the buying process and individualize marketing. When
you know a customer is a day trader and you've acquired personal profile
information about her, you can offer her special services or news specific
to day traders. You can even target other day traders that match her
profile. You're better able to target your individual customers, make a
personal connection, and predict customer buying.
3. Corporate personality now displayed on the
Internet Conducting business via the Internet means your
enterprise image is perceived and formulated by potential customers as
they download your company home page. The efficiency of your enterprise's
e-business technology can mean the difference between making a sale or
losing it.
"You now have a portal that becomes your relationship
value on the Internet. It becomes your personality," says Steve Kirchoff,
vice president of strategic marketing for Compaq's Enterprise
Division.
E-business doesn't mean pushing products at people
faster. Key to building a successful business, according to Microsoft, is
developing good relationships with customers and trading partners.
E-business can deepen relationships with customers and partners,
ultimately improving your online enterprise image.
Your organization can provide better service and
support with online transactions and communication. As more consumers use
the Web to gain access to information prior to purchasing, the level of
service and support becomes increasingly important. Web-savvy consumers
expect greater customization of products and faster service
online.
The Internet promotes close collaboration and
relationships among businesses and enhances the business-consumer
relationship, as well, according to Microsoft. The Internet brings
suppliers and buyers closer when working on joint projects. For example,
resellers can visit a supplier's Web site to check product availability
and to place orders in realtime.
4. No more 18- to 20-month project
cycles E-business technology cycles must be planned and
implemented in 90-day project cycles, Compaq's Kirchoff says. Internet
technology changes quickly, which makes the traditional 18- to 20-month
cycle for implementing new e-business technology unreasonable.
The traditional business model requires any deployment
effort to be preceded by analysis and requirements gathering, detailed
technical and design specification development, and lengthy development
and quality-assurance testing phases. The ever-changing technologies
behind e-business, however, require you to adopt a business process that
expedites deployment of newer Internet-based technologies.
"The 18- to 20-month project cycles are out the window,
and you need to rethink the cycle," Kirchoff says.
Fortunately, IT vendors have done much of the work for
you, so you can leverage existing Web-based software tools that connect
directly into legacy systems.
The choice is yours: Either have your in-house
developers reinvent the wheel and develop tools to enable e-business in
your environment (using the traditional development cycle), or have your
IT staff take on more of an integrator's role and implement third-party
tools that quickly get your Web site up and running.
5. Your environment must be agile You must be
able to reconfigure your network architecture quickly to match business
needs. Your environment must be agile enough to migrate quickly as
evolving business requirements demand new technologies.
Many companies are implementing both a company intranet
and an Internet site, business-to-business extranets are coming on fast,
and your customers are demanding more interaction through e-business. Both
internal applications and applications for external customersthe driving
force behind e-businesscan be Web based.
6. Legacy environments must adapt Existing
systems must evolve to embrace new e-business functions. The traditional
technical environment of minicomputers and mainframes must be modernized
to accommodate new ways of doing business. While these vast legacy systems
maintain their place in large organizations, the technical architecture of
your enterprise must keep pace with the industry. This means implementing
e-business technologies within legacy environments to implement the
business model of Internet-based commerce. You can protect your investment
in existing legacy systems by implementing e-business technologies that
are optimized for online transaction processing and message
switching.
7. Technical staff must be adaptable Just as
your traditional technical architecture must change to support e-business
technologies, so should the skill set of your technical staff.
Out-of-the-box thinking is in order when Fortran developers must learn
Java and other e-skills to gain a competitive edge.
8. IT's role becomes a strategic role The days
of having the IT department report to executive management are over. In
the new e-business model, the role of the IT department head is synonymous
with executive management. In the e-business environment, IT is such an
integral part of daily business operations that executive management must
be in the know when it comes to technologies. The success or failure of
your business could depend on the success of online commerce.
"The chief information officer is being promoted to
chief operating officer," says Kirchoff. "Now we see the value of
operations and technology coming closer and closer together."
9. Justify the environment, not just TCO Look
beyond hardware and software costs when designing your e-business
environment. There's more at stake. IT managers have to look beyond TCO
(total cost of ownership) when implementing e-business technologies. You
must consider the environment. How much money are you going to lose if
your Web site goes down for one minute?
Minimizing downtime isn't enough. You must eliminate
it, and the e-business technologies you deploy must be robust enough to
prevent any downtime.
"Your computer needs to be up and running all the time
without any user-visible failure," says Kirchoff.
10. Datacenter turns into a 24-by-365
environment Time of day is no limitation in the realm of
e-business. You can quickly and easily transform your enterprise into an
international business over the Internet, and a global presence requires
that your datacenter be up and running 24 hours per day, 7 days per week,
365 days per year. E-business around the globe continues at all hours of
the day and nightregardless of national holidays.
The world's fastest-growing securities market, NASDAQ,
leverages Compaq's NonStop Himalaya system with a Windows NT environment.
The integrated deployment of Windows NT on the Compaq system enables
around-the-clock Internet delivery of security services. According to
Compaq, NASDAQ has no trading floor; instead, all trading occurs online
through realtime interaction between market makers. On NonStop servers,
NASDAQ runs 20 business-critical applications with nearly two million
lines of computer code.
NonStop systems support NASDAQ with a trading platform
that has been running for 18 years and has never gone down, according to
Kirchoff.
Benefits and solutions What kinds of business
will benefit from implementing an e-business strategy? Microsoft
identifies the following target markets that benefit most:
- Direct marketing, selling, and service. This
market includes brand development, direct selling, and customer service
for business-to-business as well as business-to-consumer relationships.
- Corporate purchasing. Because the Internet can
automate manual processes for most companies, purchasing is best treated
as a self-service application for buyers and a trading application for
suppliers.
- Value chain. This encompasses establishing
direct links with trading partners, either "upstream" to suppliers or
"downstream" to distributors and resellers.
Compaq names several key benefits of stable, integrated
e-business technologies:
- Savings on development and deployment costs.
Applications can be developed once and deployed and managed throughout
your enterprise with the same staff using common tools, interfaces, and
management capabilities.
- Flexibility to meet changing business
requirements. You can add new and innovative solutions as needed,
leveraging the strengths of both Compaq's and Microsoft's platforms.
- Extended availability to protect the entire
solution. The advantages of continuous availability and scalability
can be applied cost-effectively to an integrated business solution.
- Protection of investment. Existing systems can
be evolved to embrace new functions.
Consider your options The potential benefits
of e-business include lower costs, greater credibility with customers, and
faster response times. But to successfully implement an e-business
strategy, you must consider all the ways your enterprise will potentially
change. You must be able to quickly adapt not only technologies within the
IT department, but the whole enterprise. IT managers must take on a more
strategic role in the enterprise; all departments must work in harmony to
provide a high level of support and service; and IT staff and the
technologies they support must adapt to changes resulting from this new
business model called e-business. Most importantly, your ability to engage
the customer and build customer loyalty can either make or break your
profit margin.
About the author: Shari Jones is a consultant for a
large international consulting company. She is a technical writer and
freelance journalist covering all areas of the high-tech
industry.
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