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Chapter 5 E-business strategy 259

Q. When a large business is going through a major reorganisation, what are the
main ways this can impact upon the e-commerce/digital marketing team? What
types of demands are placed on the team by different business units?
Sharon Shaw, Standard Life: The biggest problem tends to be a freeze on investment
and/or significant change. Digital teams are expected to carry on delivering business
as usual but won’t be given the opportunities to make often long-awaited improve-
ments until the reorganisation is complete.
Projects get put on hold and the team feel stuck in limbo. Strong leadership is
needed to keep everyone on track.
Source: www.econsultancy.com/news-blog/newsletter/3504/interview-with-standard-life-s-sharon-shaw.html.
Econsultancy.com provides information, training and events on best practice in online marketing and
e-commerce management.

What is e-business strategy?

Strategy Strategy defines the future direction and actions of an organization or part of an organization.
Definition of the future Johnson and Scholes (2006) define corporate strategy as:
direction and actions of a
company defined as the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term: which achieves advantage
approaches to achieve
specific objectives. for the organization through its configuration of resources within a changing environment
to meet the needs of markets and to fulfil stakeholder expectations.

Lynch (2000) describes strategy as an organization’s sense of purpose. However, he notes
that purpose alone is not strategy; plans or actions are also needed.
E-business strategies share much in common with corporate, business and marketing strat-
egies. These quotes summarizing the essence of strategy could equally apply to each strategy:
‘Is based on current performance in marketplace.’
‘Defines how we will meet our objectives.’
‘Sets allocation of resources to meet goals.’
‘Selects preferred strategic options to compete within a market.’
‘Provides a long-term plan for the development of the organization.’
‘Identifies competitive advantage through developing an appropriate positioning defining
a value proposition delivered to customer segments.’

Johnson and Scholes (2006) note that organizations have different levels of strategy, particu-
larly for larger or global organizations. These are summarized within Figure 5.1. They identify
corporate strategy which is concerned with the overall purpose and scope of the organization,
business unit strategy which defines how to compete successfully in a particular market and
operational strategies which are concerned with achieving corporate and business unit strat-
egies. Additionally, there are what can be described as functional strategies that describe how
the corporate and business unit strategies will be operationalized in different functional areas
or business processes. Functional or process strategies refer to marketing, supply chain man-
agement, human resources, finance and information systems strategies. Where does
E-business strategy e-business strategy fit? Figure 5.1 does not show at which level e-business strategy should
Definition of the approach be defined, since for different organizations this must be discussed and agreed. We can
by which applications of
internal and external observe that there is a tendency for e-business strategy to be incorporated within the func-
electronic tional strategies, for example within a marketing plan or logistics plan, or as part of
communications can
support and influence information systems (IS) strategy. A danger with this approach is that e-business strategy may
corporate strategy. not be recognized at a higher level within organizational planning. A distinguishing feature of
organizations that are leaders in e-business, such as Cisco, Dell, HSBC, easyJet and General
Electric, is that e-business is an element of corporate strategy development.