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268 Part 2 Strategy and applications

timescale, organizations naturally also need an emergent process to enable strategic agility
(introduced in Chapter 2) and the ability to rapidly respond to marketplace dynamics.
Econsultancy (2008a) has researched approaches used to encourage emergent strategies or
strategic agility (see Chapter 3) based on interviews with e-commerce practitioners. Some of
the approaches used by companies to support emergent strategy development are summa-
rized in Table 5.2.

Table 5.2 Summary of approaches used to support emergent strategy

Aspect of emergent strategy Approaches used to support emergent digital
strategy
Strategic analysis • Staff in different parts of organization encouraged to
monitor introduction of new approaches by
competitors in-sector or out of sector
• Third-party benchmarking service reporting monthly
or quarterly on new functionality introduced by
competitors
• Ad hoc customer panel used to suggest or review
new ideas for site features.
• Quarterly longitudinal testing of usability to complete
key tasks (a time-intensive activity used by one large
multinational direct reteailer)
• Subscription to audience panel data (Comscore,
Netratings, Hitwise) reviews changes in popularity of
online services
Strategy formulation and selection • Budget flexible to reassign priorities
• Dedicated or ‘ring-fenced’ IT budget up to agreed
limits to reduce protracted review cycles
• Digital channel strategy group meets monthly,
empowered to take decisions about which new web
functionality to implement
Strategy implementation • Use of agile development methodologies to enable
rapid development
• Area of site used to showcase new tools currently
under trial (for example Google Labs
(http://labs.google.com)).

Source: Econsultancy, 2008a

Kalakota and Robinson (2000) recommend a dynamic emergent strategy process specific to
e-business. The elements of this approach are shown in Figure 5.5. It essentially shares simi-
lar features to Figure 5.4, but with an emphasis on responsiveness with continuous review
and prioritization of investment in new applications.
We will now examine each of the main strategy elements of Figure 5.4 in more detail.