launching a successful online business and ec projects - Prentice Hall

W12.12 Part 7: Applications and Site Development
◗ M-commerce. Many companies are embarking on wireless applications inside the
organization and on selling and advertising via m-commerce technologies.
◗ Enterprise social networks and Web 2.0 tools. Many large companies now offer
blogs and wikis; others (e.g., Toyota, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo Bank) operate enterprise
social networks.
Organizations may consider other types of EC initiatives, following the business
models presented in Chapter 1. For example, Qantas (qantas.com.au) sells tickets online
directly from its Web site and from a B2B exchange; it buys supplies and services from
its e-procurement site as well as from several exchanges; it provides e-training for its
employees; operates several corporate portals; offers online banking services to its
employees; provides e-CRM and e-PRM; manages its frequent flyer program; supports
a wireless notification system to customers; and so on. Large companies, such as GE and
IBM, have hundreds of active EC projects.
TRANSFORMATION TO AN E-BUSINESS
As the brick-and-mortar organization implements more EC projects, it becomes a clickand-mortar
organization, and eventually an e-business. Being an e-business does not
imply that the organization is a pure-play company; it just means that it conducts as
many processes as possible online. A rapid or large-scale change from brick-and-mortar to
e-business involves organizational transformation. For planning such a transformation,
see Basu and Muylle (2007), who outline a detailed process for such a transformation.
What Is Organizational Transformation?
Organizational transformation is a comprehensive concept that implies a major organizational
change. According to McKay and Marshall (2004), a transformation is not only a
major change, but also a sharp break from the past. The key points in understanding
organizational transformation are as follows:
◗ The organization’s ways of thinking and vision will fundamentally change.
◗ There will be revolutionary changes to the process and context involved in creating
a new organizational vision and rethinking business models and business
strategy.
◗ The change must involve a substantial break from previous ways of acting. It will
likely involve discovering and developing new opportunities and new ways of
doing things.
◗ The change must permeate through and impact on the behavior of a majority of
organizational members.
◗ The change will involve creating new systems, procedures, and structures that not
only enable and dictate how new processes function, but that will also impact on the
deeply embedded business models and understandings that drive the organization.
An e-business transformation is not solely about technology. Technologies must be
integrated with possible changes in business strategy, processes, organizational culture,
and infrastructure.
How an Organization Can Be Transformed into an E-Business
Transforming an organization, especially a large company, into an e-business can be a
very complex endeavor. For an organization to transform itself into an e-business, it must