|
|
Let
the business drive the project; not technology
In
some companies, there has been a tendency to let technology drive
the direction of the eBusiness project, instead of focusing on the
core business proposition for customers.
A good example of this arose for C&D Foods, the Longford based
pet food manufacturers, who made the right decision to focus on the
needs of their customers. Whereas the initial plan was to move to
Internetbased Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI), which was the way the market was moving at the
time, it soon became apparent that this was a red herring. Terry Carr,
the Finance Director, commented as follows “You would not go
for EDI via the Internet unless your customers push you that way”.
The retailers in the UK had a lot of money invested in their current
EDI systems and were in no hurry to move to an Internet -based solution.
It was a practical lesson in designing a solution in a customer-focused
way rather than focusing on “leading edge technology”. You
must also consider the needs of the business in the short term from
both a strategic and a tactical point of view. For example, it would
not make sense to schedule the project so that the heaviest workload
coincides with a particularly busy period for your business or with
the end of the financial year.
 Estimating
whether the expected benefits of the various aspects of the project
justify the likely investment in terms of cost and time is as important
as analysing the strategic fit of any eBusiness project. Ideally,
you would calculate the return on investment (ROI) that the project
will deliver. This may not be practical. Prediction of web based sales
or internal efficiencygains are not easy to measure. For most companies,
lack of previous experience in IT projects made it difficult for them
to estimate the stages involved in an eBusiness project and to accurately
estimate the effort involved to complete these.
As a consequence, undertaking an eBusiness project was a ‘leap
of faith’ for many companies, based on the assumption that eBusiness
would continue to increase in importance. Nevertheless, when you have
worked out a project specification and budget, stop and ask yourself
whether you really believe that each element of the plan is worth
pursuing.
Do not automatically assume that just because you can make information
available, that you should. For example, if you make pricing information
available on your site, it might give your customers a strong bargaining
position or it could be used by your competitors to gain advantage.
On the other hand, if you promote a 24x7 service and you don’t
include pricing on your site, for example, then you may need to offer
24x7 telephone support.
Another consideration in making “backoffice” information
available on your site is the need to ensure that it is fully up-todate.
If a stock item is no longer available or the price is wrong, it can
cause difficulty with customers. If you can’t be completely sure
that a particular type of data will be accurate, think very carefully
before giving outsiders access to it via the website.
|
