Preparing e-business  «Prev  Next »
Lesson 1

Preparing your Business for eBusiness

A successful eBusiness involves more than just putting up a Web storefront or providing online connections for procurement and payment systems, it is about transforming the very nature of your business enterprise.
Preparing the business for this transition raises other important questions. What global changes will this involve for the existing business?
For example, how will the eBusiness be aligned within the company structure and culture? Where will the development and management of the eBusiness function fit into the organization, and should it be implemented internally or outsourced?

Architect must anticipate Change

In addition, as the architect you must consider how the eBusiness will involve the company's staff, partners, and customers. Because the process of change can be extremely damaging to business, the architect should also take steps to ensure that organization can survive and benefit from the process of this change. The architect's challenge is to achieve the right balance between the short-term pressure for change and long-term eBusiness goals, and to strategize about the structures and plans that will need to be in place once the eBusiness project is implemented to keep it current and viable.
Instituting an eBusiness strategy necessitates that all segments of the business communicate and incorporate requirements into the new system. Many companies do not realize their full return on an eBusiness investment because they do not take a holistic approach to solution implementation. Older companies who want to avoid extinction are quickly discovering that digitalization, globalization, and deregulation have changed the rules, and that they need to consider scrapping, not optimizing, their value chains.

Module Objectives

At the end of this module, you will be able to:
  1. Outline the ways in which an organization may change to include eBusiness
  2. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of in-house development and hosting
  3. Describe the importance and sequence of training staff and users
  4. Identify the technology and market forces that may impact viability
  5. Identify the top-down eBusiness issues management should address
In the next lesson, we will look at how the eBusiness is aligned within the company.

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