In the past two years, e-business seems to have permeated every aspect of daily life. In just a short time, both individuals and organizations have embraced Internet technologies to enhance productivity, maximize convenience, and improve communications globally. From banking to shopping to entertaining, the Internet has become integral to daily activities. For example, just 23 years ago, most individuals went into a financial institution and spoke with a human being to conduct regular banking transactions. Ten years later, individuals began to embrace the ATM machine, which made banking activities more convenient. Today, millions of individuals rely on online banking services to complete a large percentage of their transactions.
The rapid growth and acceptance of Internet technologies has led some to wonder why the e-business phenomenon did not occur decades ago. The short answer is: it was not possible. In the past, the necessary infrastructure did not exist to support e-business. Most businesses ran large mainframe computers with proprietary data formats. Even if it had been achievable to transfer data from these large machines into homes, the home computer was not yet a commodity, so there were few terminals outside of business to receive information. As PCs became more popular, especially in the home, the ability to conduct e-business was still restricted because of the infrastructure required to support it, including backend customer and supplier interaction along with credit card processing systems.
To set up an e-business even eight years ago would have required an individual organization to assume the burden of developing the entire technology infrastructure, as well as its own business and marketing strategies. Today, the challenge of e-business is integration. There are industry-leading companies that have solved the difficult task of developing individual Internet-based products and services that handle many of the issues surrounding customer and supplier interactions. However, the ability to integrate these technologies and services based on sound business and marketing strategies, operating on a real-time basis, can be a monumental undertaking.
As e-business continues to be fueled by both organizations and consumers who have access to the Internet from their homes and offices, the excitement grows and the potential for success increases. But explosive growth of the Internet has also led to a growing number of integration challenges for e-businesses of all sizes and types.
In phase one of building an e-business, companies scrambled to get an e-commerce Web site up quickly. The operative word was “quickly,” because usually there was little or no regard given to how scalable or reliable the site needed to be—or even how captivating the content. It was just a matter of beating the competition. These first-to-market consumer sites were rarely integrated with the manufacturing side of the business, which was establishing its own Internet-based relationships with suppliers. This lack of integration has proved to be a significant challenge for many organizations as the customer base has grown, real-time order status has been requested, and products have been returned.
In phase two of building an e-business, having an e-commerce site is now a commodity, not a way to differentiate a business. Customer and supplier expectations are rising, forcing organizations to start thinking about backend integration and real-time transaction processing. Businesses must actually maintain complete customer and supplier relationships using Internet-based technologies and tie those systems to the interpersonal aspects of the business transaction when required. Organizations that realize the promise of e-business are the ones that have begun to address the complete business cycle and are leveraging Internet technologies.
It is no secret that today’s e-business has the potential to transform the business landscape. Whereas in the past, a company’s business model was the primary determination of its value, today, a company is valued on its strategy, business model, and ability to market. With technology driving new competition, a Fortune 500 stalwart that once seemed unstoppable is now challenged by a start-up that uses Internet technologies and integrates their systems and processes more effectively. By capitalizing on a sustained business proposition and correctly applying technology, these start-ups are able to significantly reduce the barriers to entry while dramatically increasing their market reach. For e-businesses, the premise “first to market equals first to success” is often the case; however, the foundation needs to be laid carefully. A disciplined approach to evaluating the business opportunity, and correctly assessing how a competitive advantage may be gained using Internet technologies combined with leveraging the existing investment, is key to a successful e-business.
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An e-business model is simply the approach a company takes to become a profitable business on the Internet. There are many buzzwords that define aspects of electronic business, and there are subgroups as well, such as content providers, auction sites, and pure-play Internet retailers in the business-to-consumer space.
Many Internet firms witnessed a meteoric rise in their stock values in the late 1990s, only to crash in 2000. For instance, Drkoop.com Inc. in Austin, Texas, announced its initial public offering at $9 per share in June of 1999. The price rose to more than $30 per share, but then plummeted to less than $1 per share.
Given the carnage among dot-com stocks recently, what type of online business models are expected to succeed in the future? Businesses need to make more money than they spend. The new model is the old model, but technology is essential to maintain a competitive advantage, and cash flow is more important than ever.
For example, Yahoo Inc. in Santa Clara, California, has always operated a successful portal site, providing content and an Internet search engine. However, many portal sites, such as Go.com, MSN.com, and AltaVista.com, have fallen on hard times.
The idea behind portals is the same as that behind television advertising: aggregating eyeballs and directing them toward advertisements. But, television viewers are passive, and people need to wait through the ads to see the shows they want to watch.
However, the Web doesn’t work that way. Content presentation is not serial. Viewers are active, not passive. There are always millions of places to go. No Web advertisement can match a 20-second TV spot.
When First-to-Market Fails
Many of the failing companies were operating on a first-to-market strategy. Their hope was that by getting their ideas out ahead of the market, consumers would develop brand loyalty before competitors arrived.
For example, Priceline.com Inc. in Norwalk, Connecticut, is a good example of a company that attempted this strategy, with its name-your-own-price scheme for buying airline tickets and other goods. However, the closing of Priceline.com Inc.’s Greenwich, Connecticut-based WebHouse Group licensee (which applied the same model to groceries and gasoline), combined with increased competition from airlines and other travel sites, led Wall Street to trade Priceline.com’s stock down to less than $3 per share in December 2000, from a high of $104.25 in March 2000.
First-to-market as a business model has always been risky. You are vulnerable because you have nothing proprietary, need vast funding, and rely on rapid deployment.
So why did investors and venture capitalists get caught in such speculative and irrational investments? Investors felt they were investing in technology, when they were really investing in retailers and distributors. These companies have small profit margins. They couldn’t justify their valuations in typical price/earnings ratios. When does it turn profitable? Companies such as Amazon.com have yet to answer that.
One segment of the business-to-consumer world that’s thriving is niche markets. For example, RedEnvelope Gifts Inc., which launched in 1997 as 911gifts.com, began as a last-minute gift site, but now markets more than 5,000 items that are unique to the site. Customers seem willing to pay a premium for RedEnvelope-edited selection and enhanced customer service. The company has $70 million in sales, with a 57-point profit margin.
There needs to be a quick path to profitability. And, the ultimate metric is margin. There are three levers to achieving margin: edited selection, customer service, and inspirational branding.
The B2B Way
Is the model buyer- or seller-centric? What is the driving force of the business?
The greatest strength of the Internet is its ability to bring together people, governments, and businesses and facilitate the flow of information among them. This is one of the main reasons why business models for business-to-business online marketplaces are expected to succeed.
It’s clear that the Internet is a viable platform for B2B trade. According to Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a projected $4.9 trillion in business-to-business (B2B) transactions will be made online by 2004.
But private marketplaces being formed by industry leaders represent a more successful model. These real-time supply chains and e-business design systems are phasing out the more expensive and inflexible electronic data interchange networks.
The real surprise here is how hard it is to become profitable. The cost of branding technology is so high that consumers still use a catalog. A Web site is just another channel.
The emerging e-business market affords companies of all sizes and types the opportunity to leverage their existing assets, employees, technology infrastructure, and information to gain or maintain marketshare. For example, in the telecommunications industry, service, rather than technology, is now the key differentiator. With lower barriers to entry, new competitors are rapidly entering the market offering new services, such as online bill presentment and payment, and leveraging their unique digital assets.
Information technology research analysts agree that e-business is any net-enabled business activity that transforms internal and external relationships to create value and exploit market opportunities driven by new rules of the connected economy. However, today’s e-business requires more. Industry analysts further point out that e-business involves the continuous optimization of an organization’s value proposition and value-chain position through the adoption of digital technology.
The challenge for an organization is to turn the vision and the market opportunity into a viable business. Developing the marketing strategy and plans and designing and deploying the business solution is key. Those who successfully architect, develop, and deploy e-business solutions will need to formulate and adopt a comprehensive business plan. Because of the critical role of Internet technologies and integration requirements, it is recommended that organizations need a comprehensive planning framework—an actual e-business model. This structured planning approach enables the organization to assess, plan for, and implement the multiple aspects of an e-business.
Building an e-business (an integrated value chain) that leverages the Internet’s communications capabilities is a complex undertaking. The complex integration requirements of the business solutions, all performing at extremely high levels of availability and scalability, require an e-business model architectural approach. The value chain (comprised of the traditional supply chain management functions, planning, procurement, and inventory management, coupled with the customer-facing functions, typically referred to as customer relationship management) has integration and performance demands that exceed the requirements seen in traditional businesses. In a successful e-business, all of these areas are tightly integrated to provide an organization the ability to quickly and efficiently sell, manufacture, and deliver products or services.
Furthermore, in a successful e-business, this value chain rests on a foundation that leverages the organization’s existing core operational business systems, as well as meets the new business-critical operational requirements for reliability, scalability, flexibility, and 24 × 7 × 365 availability in a highly volatile, electronic marketplace.
- Solid strategies
- Knowledge management techniques applied to a company’s information and intellectual assets
- Effective e-business processes typically grouped in the customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), and core business operations domains
Customer relationships are becoming a more important factor in differentiating one business from another. In order to stay competitive, e-businesses in every industry have begun to analyze these relationships with customers using CRM solutions.
In the past, customers would place an order via the telephone and wait until the company’s purchasing department processed and shipped the order. Today’s customers place an order electronically and then demand to be able to check the status of their order within minutes.
CRM enables an organization to adopt a comprehensive view of the customer and maximize this relationship. These CRM systems enable a business to identify, attract, retain, and support customs centers, direct mail, and retail facilities. In an efficient e-business, there are CRM processes in place to handle:
Analytical CRM: The analysis of data created on the operational side of the CRM equation for the purpose of business performance management; utilizing data warehousing technologies and leveraging data marts
Customer interactions: Sales, marketing, and customer service (call center, field service) via multiple, interconnected delivery channels and integration between front office and back office
Operational CRM: The automation of horizontally integrated business processes involving “front office” customer touch points
Personalization: The use of new and traditional groupware/Web technologies to facilitate customer and business partner communications
Supply Chain Management
Integration of the SCM functions is emerging as one of the greatest challenges facing today’s e-businesses. SCM is the integration of business processes from end user through to original supplier. The goal of SCM is to create an end-to-end system that automates all the business processes between suppliers, distribution partners, and trading partners. The new mantra for this process, according to industry analysts, is “replacing inventory with information.” In an effective e-business, the following SCM independent processes must be highly integrated
Demand management: These are shared functions, including demand planning, supply planning, manufacturing planning, and sales and operations planning.
Inbound/outbound logistics: These include transportation management, distribution management, and warehouse management.
Summary
To be successful, e-businesses must have a continuous optimization business strategy, solid knowledge management practices, and integrated business process domains. No matter what the business, the e-business model processes are the same.
The e-business market affords organizations of all sizes and types the opportunity to leverage their existing assets, employees, technology infrastructure, and information to gain or maintain marketshare. However, the challenge for the organization is to turn the vision and the market opportunity into a sustainable e-business.
Finally, the need for an integrated value chain challenges the e-business to optimize its intellectual assets and its investments in core business systems in order to deliver its products and services to an unpredictable market. It is this unpredictable nature that challenges the IT organization to deliver the highly scalable and available infrastructure. Additional challenges include the unique nature of an e-business and the tight linking of the business operations to a technical infrastructure. A disciplined and architected approach based on an e-business model provides the framework needed to build complex business processes and technical infrastructures that the market is increasingly demanding.
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