Page 295 - E-Bussiness and E-Commerce Management Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

M05_CHAF9601_04_SE_C05.QXD:D01_CHAF7409_04_SE_C01.QXD 16/4/09 11:12 Page 262

262 Part 2 Strategy and applications

Corporate
strategy

Constraints and Objectives
opportunities

E-business Chapter 5
strategy

Chapters Chapters
6 and 7 SCM Marketing/CRM 8 and 9
Buy-side strategy strategy Sell-side
e-commerce e-commerce

Information systems
strategy

All chapters
SCM = supply chain management
CRM = customer relationship management

Figure 5.2 Relationship between e-business strategy and other strategies

E-channel strategies

E-channel strategies An important aspect of e-business strategies is that they create new ‘e-channel strategies’
Define how a company for organizations.
should set specific
objectives and develop E-channel strategies define specific goals and approaches for using electronic channels.
specific differential This is to prevent simply replicating existing processes through e-channels, which will create
strategies for efficiencies but will not exploit the full potential for making an organization more effective
communicating with its
customers and partners through e-business. Without specific goals and strategies to communicate the benefit of
through electronic media e-channels for customers and partners, adoption of the new channels will be slow relative to
such as the Internet,
e-mail and wireless a structured approach. We will see in the section on objective setting that key metrics about
media. online contribution can be set which suggest the percentage and value of leads, sales, ser-
vices and purchases that are facilitated through e-commerce transactions. E-channel
Multi-channel
e-business strategy strategies also need to define how electronic channels are used in conjunction with other
Defines how different channels as part of a multi-channel e-business strategy. This multi-channel e-business
marketing and supply strategy defines how different marketing and supply chain channels should integrate and
chain channels should
integrate and support support each other in terms of their proposition development and communications based
each other to drive on their relative merits for the customer and the company. Finally, we also need to remem-
business efficiency and
effectiveness. ber that e-business strategy also defines how an organization gains value internally from
using electronic networks, such as sharing employee knowledge and improving process ef-
ficiencies through intranets. Myers et al. (2004) provide a useful summary of the decisions
required about multi-channel marketing.