Look before you leap - Company Business and Marketing

Communications News, March, 2001 by Ken Anderberg

At the extremes, there are two types of executives when the subject turns to e-business: the one who jumps in head-first without testing the water's depth, and the second who determines the water is too cold without even sticking a toe in. According to the panel of e-business experts who participated in Communications News' "E-business and the Enterprise" roundtable discussion at ComNet 2001 (see this month's cover story), both of these executives may sink before they swim.

Panelist Steve Schilling, CEO and president of Netifice Communications, cautioned, "We get caught up in putting e-business solutions in place that are 10-pound solutions for two-pound problems. We get caught up in the great big initiatives that just don't warrant that kind of effort, energy and expense."

Bob Egan, of research and consulting company Gartner, warned, "The companies that are going to be successful in e-business are those that identify and adopt technologies that align with their key business initiatives. Anybody that doesn't understand that doesn't exist five years from now. The question is not whether it's right for your business."

Developing a business strategy for e-business initiatives is the first step enterprises should take before jumping in, roundtable participants agreed. Technology choices come later. In addition, intertwined with those issues is dealing with entrenched corporate cultures.

"The leaders have to understand it's not about technology, it's not about culture and it's not about your product," said Kay Hammer, CEO of Evolutionary Technologies. "It really is identifying the business opportunities, identifying the technologies and managing the adoption of the business."

Hammer talked about a customer, a manufacturer that brought in a technical visionary CFO who figured data warehousing was going to transform the firm. "What he didn't realize was how well entrenched those guys were in the data center. That CFO was out of there within 18 months, because he underestimated how he could be sabotaged by people who really aren't looking at the global level but at the importance of their local turf."

It was a classic case of trying to implement change without strategic direction, of jumping in head first before testing the water's depth. If I can mix metaphors just this once, it also may have been a case of putting the cart before the horse. The customer, several panelists noted, comes first.

"The only opinion that matters is the constituency that you're serving, and whether they see value in what you're doing," offered Paul Morris, vice president of business development for Delano Technology Corp. "You need to start with the constituency you're serving and then work your process back. That will address the cultural issue, the business process that adds value and the technology solution that serves that. The promise of e-business is the ability to understand which of the back office processes create value and to allow the constituency of the enterprise to help define what that is, and to improve it rather than just push it out there."

The biggest challenge to e-business success, according to Ken Kiser of Cacheflow is "the people. Some of (the technology) works, some of it doesn't. All of it's overhyped. The biggest issue, though, is the cultural issues you deal with inside the organization. You have the network guys who don't talk to the phone guys who don't talk to the server guys. The one thing I know is people absolutely hate change. Everyone tries to maintain their turf."

Added Schilling, "This is a change the world is going through, and you need to understand that, but be selective. You can't roll up in a ball and say, `I'm not going to do this,' because you won't survive. There is real productivity, value and improvement that are delivered by these kinds of solutions. You can't ignore them. But if you just jump into them hog wild, because it's the cool thing to do, that's almost as dangerous as holding back and waiting."

In either extreme, you may find your enterprise swimming for its life.