Page 14 - E-Bussiness and E-Commerce Management Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

A01_CHAF9601_04_SE_FM.QXD:D01_CHAF7409_04_SE_C01.QXD 16/4/09 10:59 Page xiii

Preface

In 1849 a group of settlers travelling west towards the promised land, California, entered a
then unnamed valley. The valley presented a harsh environment with a barrier of mountains
to the west making the way forward unclear. Some of the settlers lost their lives as they
sought to find a route west before eventually reaching California and what was to become
one of the most prosperous places on Earth. As the group left the valley, one of the women
in the group turned and said ‘Goodbye, Death Valley’ and hence the valley got its name. The
route to e-business success is also not straightforward and similarly fraught with difficulties
of selecting the correct strategic direction and surviving in an increasingly harsh competitive
environment. Not all who follow the route survive. However, the competitive drivers to
follow this route, such as demand from customers and adoption by competitors, make this
journey essential. The rewards are evident from those adopters who identified the opportu-
nity early and steered their companies in the right direction.
But the journey to e-business can never be completed, because of the relentless evolution
in technology and new commercial approaches which exploit it. Smart e-businesses have an
agile approach which enables them to review and select the appropriate technologies at the
right time.
Flagship e-businesses with headquarters in California such as eBay and Google.com are
now leading global brands with turnovers of billions of dollars, yet this has happened less
than 300 years after the first modern settlers arrived.
This book is intended to equip current and future managers with some of the knowledge
and practical skills to help them navigate their organization towards e-business. It is your
guide to how all types of companies can prosper through e-business.
A primary aim of this book is to identify and review the key management decisions
required by organizations moving to e-business and consider the process by which these
decisions can be taken. Key questions are the following: What approach to e-business strat-
egy do we follow? How much do we need to invest in e-business? Which processes should be
our e-business priorities? Should we adopt new business and revenue models? What are the
main changes that need to be made to the organization to facilitate e-business?
Given the broad scope of e-business, this book takes an integrative approach drawing on
new and existing approaches and models from many disciplines including information sys-
tems, strategy, marketing, supply and value chain management, operations and human
resources management.

What is e-business management?

Electronic As we will see in Chapter 1, electronic business (e-business) is aimed at enhancing the com-
commerce petitiveness of an organization by deploying innovative information and communications
(e-commerce)
technology throughout an organization and beyond, through links to partners and customers.
All electronically mediated
information exchanges It does not simply involve using technology to automate existing processes, but should also
between an organization achieve process transformation by applying technology to help change these processes. To be
and its external stake-
holders. successful in managing e-business, a breadth of knowledge is needed of different business
processes and activities from across the value chain such as marketing and sales, through new
product development, manufacturing and inbound and outbound logistics. Organizations
also need to manage the change required by new processes and technology through what have
traditionally been support activities such as human resources management.