| 2nd Edition - eBusiness Strategy Bulletin August 2000 From our President: Gregg V. Rock, President, BrainStorm Group, Inc.; From the Chairman: Let’s Save a Little Effort, by Ian S. Hayes, eBusiness Strategy Conference Chairman and President, Clarity Consulting Group; The Experts Corner: Practical Lessons from eBusiness Strategy Planning: Building Appropriate Foundations, by Larry Paul, Vice President, ePractices; and Philip R. Murphy, Managing Director of ePractices Research; Conference Overview: eBusiness Strategy Conference San Francisco - October 2-4, 2000 From our President Gregg V. Rock, President, BrainStorm Group, Inc. Welcome to BrainStorm Group's eBusiness Strategy Bulletin! The articles featured in this issue will provide you with a sampling of the issues addressed within our Fall conference programs. You'll also find a preview of our upcoming San Francisco eBusiness Strategy Conference, which will be held October 2-4. Don't miss this opportunity to meet face to face with eBusiness Strategy "thought leaders", highly acclaimed authors, writers and editors, representatives from leading analyst and research firms, and END USER practitioners. I hope the articles featured in this issue will assist you in your efforts to develop, implement and manage your company's eBusiness initiatives. We will continue to tap our vast network of resources in future issues in order to bring you the latest insight on the essential components of a successful eBusiness Strategy. I look forward to hosting you at one of our upcoming events. From the Chairman Let’s Save a Little Effort By Ian S. Hayes, eBusiness Strategy Conference Chairman and President, Clarity Consulting Group The blush is finally gone. No longer does every e-business idea create an instant millionaire nor does a flashy web site spell success. How quickly the world changed from market share at any cost to the need to make a profit. Underneath the glitz and the glamour, e-business is still business and, despite the undeniable changes wrought by the Internet, certain fundamental principles still apply. Except for a lucky few, the easy money is gone; the rest of us will have to succeed through hard work. Anyone creative can build an attractive web site, but building and connecting the systems and processes to make that web site into a going concern is tough, complicated work. As always, the execution is the hard part. The low hanging fruit is gone, and while the future remains boundless, it will take more knowledge, more effort and excellent execution to set an e-business effort apart from the pack. But let’s be honest, we all knew that this moment was coming. It’s part of the maturing process where e-business transforms into real business. As e-business becomes part of business as usual, it means that we must somehow integrate the existing and the future and make it all work. And work better than our competitors. The beauty of the situation is that we have more tools than ever before. The new economy has, and continues to encourage an unprecedented rate of innovation in all areas of business. Creative ideas, new services and new products enter the business world at a stunning rate. They allow us to accomplish tasks that we never would have dreamed of before, but they raise the bar for everyone. For example, business-to-business trading exchanges give entire industries a powerful tool for increasing the efficiency for their supply chains, but they push their participants into increasing their own efficiency to survive. Success is a combination of finding and recognizing a new idea, understanding its implications, and determining how to apply that idea within your business. And of course, investing the resources and effort that it takes to make that idea work in the real world. We can short-cycle this process by learning from others. No matter how busy we are, can we afford not to pick up ideas from those who have gone before us? Do we really have enough time to repeat the work done by others or forsake tools or services that may ease our burdens? The goal of the eBusiness Strategy Conference Series is to provide a business-oriented forum for exchanging innovative ideas and best practices in all areas of e-business. Its intent is to offer its participants a mixture of strategic thought, leading industry analysis and real life experience. Find new ways to reach your customers, avoid legal issues, collaborate with your partners or fund your e-venture. Now that the hard work has arrived, let’s figure out how to do a little less of it. The Experts Corner: Practical Lessons from eBusiness Strategy Planning: Building Appropriate Foundations By Larry Paul, Vice President, ePractices; and Philip R. Murphy, Managing Director of ePractices Research Historically, some companies have been successful with e-business initiatives because they were first to market, had compelling offerings and were extremely lucky. Others have failed due to equally mysterious combinations of bad luck and circumstances. However, the window has closed on this chapter of e-business history. Any company that expects to succeed today will have to do so in a determined manner, marshaling the resources of its entire organization toward a unified vision of the future, marked by a balance of “e” and business. A team of motivated stakeholders, led by an executive-level champion and guided by an objective facilitator, must recast an organization’s operational model to optimize it with new forces and capabilities. Departmental barriers dissolve, market opportunities appear and disappear, and traditional thought patterns are shattered as organizations prepare to think, act and recast themselves as participants in the information age, capable of running at Web speed. Roadblocks along the way include decentralized/duplicated efforts, too much or too little IT involvement, lack of clear accountability, failure to nurture the massive amount of requisite organizational change and succumbing to the one-size-fits-all mentality. Although history is a valuable mentor, every organization is unique, and must strike the balance of learning from the past, while maintaining a unique organizational identity and custom-fit plan for the future. With a recast business outlook and awareness of its organizational identity, executive-level champions and e-business teams must educate themselves on a number of topics, including the changes in their industries and markets, and Internet usage within and outside of their industries. Factors, such as talent, process, organization, technology and measurement, combine and recombine as options are weighed and evaluated. When and how the organization might impose or suffer channel conflict is directly related to some e-business strategies. Outsourcing e-business planning as a way of escaping its headaches may at first appear attractive, but it is analogous to handing the reins of the company over to perfect strangers. In a recent presentation, Antonio Franco, Giga’s managing director of ePractices Strategy Planning, noted that from a style standpoint, the term “eBusiness” is properly capitalized — the “B” is capitalized because it is the most important part of the term, and the “e” is lower cased because it is the lesser of the two. Unless the outsourcers know more about the organization’s business than the executive-level champion and e-business team does, where is the justification to outsource? However, external resources can and should play an enabling role in many ways. External resources can:
Organizations must realize that there is no magic recipe for success, other than a careful deliberate approach — thoughtful in preparation, expedient in execution — that takes full aim at the question, “To what extent, and for what purpose, should this organization use e-business?” Through this activity, strike the right ownership balance, get enough external help to succeed without surrendering the organization’s reins to strangers or force-fitting a one-size-fits-all solution on a custom-made organization. This article is an Executive Summary from The Executive Advisor by Giga Information Group. It is the product of a collaborative effort between Giga's ePractices consulting advisors, who work directly with clients to solve e-business problems, and its research advisors, who interview leading companies to identify and document successful e-business techniques. Our San Francisco conference has been specifically designed to provide forward thinking executives with comprehensive coverage of the latest e-business strategies being implemented by leading organizations. Extended educational sessions detail proven "best of breed" solutions, lessons learned, technological advancements and developing trends in e-business. Join us in San Francisco for an unparalleled program lead by our Opening Keynote Presenter: Rich Karlgaard, Publisher, Forbes Magazine, and Co-founder, garage.com --- a complete agenda is available for your review. The eBusiness Strategy Conference is sponsored by over 30 organizations including our Premier Media Co-Sponsor, The New York Times. REGISTER EARLY! Additional BrainStorm Events in 2000 Include: eBusiness Strategy Conference eBusiness Integration Conference: B2B Integration Strategies and Solutions |