Introduction
Establishing a business is never been easy and it will never will, not unless you really have a magic in your pocket. And if the establishment of it is not that easy, how about maintaining it? The maintenance of a certain business needs proper study about the current state of the economy as well as the status of the business. The business should answer the consumer preferences and must be updated on the latest trend of technology, so that, the business can run after the new generation of competition.
Most businesses create a way to have a connection towards their customers, and if possible, at all times. They create initiatives to push the sales in higher level it can. Many organizations realized the importance of integrating their e-business initiatives into their current business operations. This does not only mean integrating with the organization’s internal systems, but may also entail integration with the systems of suppliers and other business partners.
Web services are the latest technological change and it is predicted that they will revolutionize business. They enable communication between heterogeneous distributed applications. Anyone can publish their own services using standard Internet protocols and customers around the world will be able to easily combine these services into their applications and provide better services. The Web services provide innovative ways of carrying out business and can be used for achieving simple or more complex integration. They can be accessed by different types of users, including traditional applications, other web services, and people using the browser.1
The E-Initiatives
According to a survey conducted with the participation of different industries like the manufacturing, financial services, transportation, retail, energy, and communications industries and virtually all conduct business in international markets.
The survey found that only 28 percent are able to process transactions online. Sixty percent do not yet have extranets linking operations with key suppliers and financial partners.
Only 17 percent of companies said they regard themselves as “innovative” in e-business. Less than half have any quantitative or qualitative methods in place to assess e-business performance. And a quarter of the group has yet to move beyond basic Web brochure ware in implementing e-business.
One of the biggest disparities was between stated e-business needs and corresponding investment. Most still feel encumbered by major barriers to development, including costs of implementation, lack of proven benefits and accepted industry standards, and more pressing corporate priorities, plus not being up to speed on key privacy, security, legal and emerging intellectual property issues.
Still, a majority said they were investing far more on e-business now than a year ago, and devoting much greater senior management oversight into e-efforts. Nearly half of the participants have full-time e-business development units, another marked increase over last year’s survey.2
Whirlpool Corporation
The Whirlpool Corporation is a Fortune 500 company and a global manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances. After acquiring the Maytag Corporation on March 31, 2006, Whirlpool Corporation became “the largest home appliance maker in the world”.
Whirlpool Corporation is a principal supporter of Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit organization dedicated to building low-cost, affordable housing. The company’s commitment to Habitat for Humanity has exceeded million and it has donated more than 73,000 appliances for Habitat homes. The company plans to support every Habitat home built globally by 2011, either through product donations, cash, or home sponsorship.3
For the broader concept of the topic, the study relates it to another study done by the IBM. The IBM created a study with concern for their past experiences. As we all know, IBM is the largest IT Company that provides e-initiatives for the corporation.
Problem of a Consumer Packaged-goods Company
A large consumer packaged-goods organization was highly experienced at branding and establishing policy but found that its knowledge and skills did not translate well to e-business. There were different rules for success in the new environment, but the company’s culture was not open to learning them because of its success in the traditional business model. Also, the company was having difficulty structuring a way to drive brand consistency throughout its entire e-business enterprise, since brand independence was a key priority and a foundation of its corporate culture. In short, it became clear that the very qualities that had made the company successful could prevent it from moving forward quickly enough for e-business.
In this situation, the business units and their respective brands were more important than the overall corporate brand. Consequently, it was important for this company to build an e-business management system that would reflect its decentralized authority model. To accomplish this, a small centralized group was developed with the mission to facilitate change and advocate e-business within the company.
The centralized group was chartered with developing expertise in e-business and transferring that knowledge to the business units. It also collaborated with business units to optimize and coordinate deployment of assets across the enterprise. To help guide the company’s efforts, an e-business executive council was established, and virtual communities met to coordinate discussion on topics such as technology, content, knowledge and required processes. These changes helped the packaged-goods company reach its e-business goals.
Lessons
How to avoid common problems faced by companies new to e-business?
Launch and learn: Swift, innovative implementation, with the understanding that the solution must constantly evolve, will ultimately provide a better outcome than working to develop precise answers to issues. It is important to set the expectation that these decisions will change, both incrementally and significantly, and that changes will occur more frequently than in the past.
Define roles and responsibilities: The organizational structure for an e-business management system is often complex, so it is vital that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined to avoid problems of role overlap or role gap. This is especially true with activities where multiple groups or individuals participate.
Commit to invest: Although it is important to steer e-business efforts toward a clear path of return on the company’s investment, a premature focus on the financial aspects may thwart the development of innovative initiatives. Often, the best initial focus is speed or learning through the quick and broad dissemination of information companywide.
Explore policies: Make sure policy issues are explored and that policy-related decisions are communicated companywide. Web site audits have uncovered embarrassing and illegal materials. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon and most companies are unaware of the full extent of their exposures. Access to technology and content is pervasive, and this has led to difficult situations for many companies.
Design for Web use: Strategically reducing Web site content often increases site use and revenue. Rather than read content word for word, users scan site information. Making the most relevant content quickly and easily accessible is the secret to a valuable and profitable Web site. The content model helps focus a company on these important aspects.
Re-examine funding: Funding may be found by re-examining a company’s entire list of initiatives and projects. The most successful companies have been willing to decommission some initiatives that were underway to free up needed funding, resources, executive leadership capacity and organizational capacity for change.
Focus on business goals: Remember the “business” in e-business. Transformation to e-business is not a technology issue. If you treat it like a technology effort by failing to establish effective reporting relationships and business-executive involvement, it is less likely that your organization will make the fundamental shifts necessary for e-business success.
Make resource commitments: Consultants are limited in the amount of aid they can provide their clients regarding important managerial issues. The organization must provide adequate resources for its effort from the very beginning. Without the proper resources, both in terms of organization and numbers of people, only slow progress will be made in the e-business space.
Final Statement
Every business that needs innovation to excel needs the right equipment to help the business pursuit the success. As for the IBM, the e-business is not simply viewed as a marketing campaign. Undoubtedly, e-business is radically changing the way business is done. New e-business models are enabled by emerging technologies that allow companies to more effectively unite with customers, partners and suppliers. Companies that can successfully leverage these new technologies and ways of doing business will position themselves for unprecedented growth.
Ambiguity surrounding the potential and problems of e-business is impeding companies from being proactive. However, the e-business opportunity is vast, as are the risks of failing to embrace e-business.
The problem emerging amongst the organizations that failed to adopt the e-initiatives maybe at some point, forget other specific information or rather the application is not appropriate to the target mass of their company. The failure of an experiment doesn’t mean that it is not acceptable at any matter. Somehow, many studies prove that the initiatives are effective in duly performance of a business.
Another problem that might arise is the fact that some organizations are afraid of the loss of profit. It is important for an organization to conduct good investigation in the scope of their business. A business must answer the craving market for a new generation specifically, when it comes with a technology.
References:
1. E-Initiatives [Online] Available at: www.kaizenlog.com [Accessed 04 Aug 2009].
2. Cox, B., (2000) Survey: Global Business Lagging on E-Commerce [Online] Available at: http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/print.php/325241 [Accessed 04 Aug 2009].
3. Whirlpool Corporation [Online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_Corporation [Accessed 04 Aug 2009].
Other Source:
The Importance of an E-business Management System to E-business Success. Managing the business of e-business (2000). IBM Global Services. [Online] Available at: http://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/faculty/Sirkka.Jarvenpaa/spring2002/change/miller/ebusMan.pdf [Accessed 04 Aug 2009].
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