By David Marco

Over the last several years we have learned a new vocabulary. The "E" vocabulary. e-business, e-commence, e-solutions, e-economy, e-mail, and my personal favorite "business at the speed of e". I would like to add a new term: e-dilemma. This describes the situation that many organizations experience when building their e-business solutions. Companies that experience the e-dilemma spend considerable amounts of development dollars to create an e-business solution that accomplishes only two things – the alienation of existing and potential customers, and becomes the central theme of "what-not-to-do" articles. In this column I will discuss some of the key issues that corporations need to address to avoid the e-dilemma when building an e-business solution.

Understanding What e-Business Is

Too often corporations believe that e-business is a cure-all to their selling issues. They believe that all they need to do is build a website, market it on GO.com, Yahoo.com, and AOL and wait for the money to roll in. Unfortunately reality offers a vastly different picture. E-business is nothing more than a new customer touchpoint (the internet) that serves a new, but familiar customer segment (web users). Keep in mind that typically many of these web users are not new customers but existing customers that have internet access and are inclined to make purchases in the privacy of their own home through the internet. If these customers have a negative experience on your website then this can directly impact their opinion on your other distribution channels (store, catalog, etc.). Translation: a website built incorrectly, has the capacity to reduce your current customer base.

Implementing an E-business Solution Without Redesigning Your Business Model

Before racing off to build your e-business solution, first take the time to examine your business model to make sure that your e-initiative fits your model. After examining your model you may decide that you need to significantly change it, which is likely to initiate many changes within your firm. I’ll use my own company as an example. We are a consulting firm so our product is a service that aids corporations in building their IT (information technology) systems. In that vein it is highly unlikely that anyone is going to go to our website, and engage us directly on a project. After visiting our site they may decide that they need to contact us. As a result, we have to make sure that our contact information is easy to locate (email addresses, mailing address, and phone numbers). In addition, since we are a consulting firm we need to have a web presence. People want to be able to visit our site and become familiar with what we do. When they visit our site they need to be able to quickly understand if we are a strategic partner or a "body shop" consulting firm. So while our website will not generate a single on-line order it can create leads and can differentiate us from the competition.

Non-Integrated Systems

We have heard many stories on the various web problems that corporations have encountered. We have all read about companies that could not fulfill all the orders that they received during the Christmas holiday. There is an old marketing rule that "A customer will tell 2 - 4 people when they are happy with a product/service you’ve given them. These same customers will tell 12 – 20 other potential customers when they are dissatisfied with your product/service." I have a client that looked to purchase a winter coat (a fellow Chicagoan) from his favorite coat maker this past year. It was during the Christmas holiday and this person did not want to battle the holiday shoppers so he figured that he could go to this company’s website and find the coat he wanted. Upon going to this website he has successful in locating the exact coat that he wanted, unfortunately when he tried to place this order on-line he was told that the coat was out-of-stock. Undaunted he then called the corporation’s toll-free phone number and was also told that they were out-of-stock on this coat. However, a couple of days later he was in his local mall and walked past one of their stores. On a whim he entered this store and discovered a rack full of the exact same coats he saw on the web. However these coats were priced at $40 less than the website. What happened is that this corporation in their rush to build a corporate website did not take the time to integrate their e-Business system into their existing legacy order entry systems. It is important to note that most of the web debacles that we’ve read about have occurred with the well-know Global 2000 corporations and not with the new "dot com" startups. This has occurred because the established companies have to reengineer their existing systems to work with their e-Solutions. On the other hand, the "dot com" startups took the "re" out of reengineering as these companies didn’t have any existing systems to be integrated.

I do not want to leave you with a negative impression on e-Business. e-Business is a critical initiative for the vast majority of companies if not for all of the major ones. Make sure to follow these guidelines and you will not experience the e-Dilemma and avoid becoming the theme of the "what-not-to-do" articles.

About the Author

Mr. Marco is an internationally recognized expert in the field of data warehousing, e-business, XML, business intelligence, and is the industry’s leading authority on meta data. Mr. Marco is the author of the upcoming book "Building and Managing the Meta Data Repository: A Full Life-Cycle Guide" (John Wiley & Sons, July 2000). Mr. Marco is also a columnist for Application Development Trends magazine, Database Trends magazine, DM Review magazine and is a judge in their 1998, 1999, and 2000 World-Class Solutions awards. In addition, his keynote addresses and courses can be heard at all of the major data warehousing conferences throughout the world. Mr. Marco is the founder and President of Enterprise Warehousing Solutions, Inc. (EWS), a Chicago-headquartered strategic partner and systems integrator dedicated to providing clients with best-in-class business intelligence solutions using decision support technologies. EWS specializes in assisting global organizations in understanding, building, and leveraging data warehouse, e-business, data mart, and meta data repository investments to attain a competitive business advantage. He may be reached at (708) 233-6330 or via email at DMarco@EWSolutions.com