The choice between technologies has to be largely driven by what will enable the requisite customer experience. Unfortunately, personal agendas seem to be a key driver within businesses where zealots push one technology over another without really understanding the effects their preferred technologies will ultimately have on the customer experience.
1.. The new industry
The Web creates new connections between companies that participate within industries.
These connections can create new ways for different companies to work together more efficiently. This phenomenon is giving rise to new industry structures such as those seen in business-to-consumer and business-to-business Net markets. These Net markets are creating new buyers and sellers and bringing them together within a whole new business model. Once industry relationships fundamentally change, so do the rules of business in that industry. In fact, sometimes the industry is dismantled and new industries emerge.
And so, businesses today need to ask themselves the following questions:
• What is our new industry structure?
• What are the risks and opportunities for e-businesses in this new industry?
• How will maximum value be achieved throughout the value chain? Where does that place our business within that value chain?
• Has disintermediation occurred where companies have been removed from the supply chain (e.g. direct selling)? Or is mediation just as, or more, important (where companies, such as intermediaries for buying groups, have been added to the supply chain).
2.. The new economy
As industry structures change the economics of an industry also change because different industry participants are faced with delivering against a different value proposition, and they will be remunerated in line with the value they create. When http://Amazon.com came online they started to change the economy for book-selling, for example.
Amazon.com's low margin business forced bricks-and-mortar booksellers to re-engineer their business to be able to compete in this economy of lower margins and lower prices to consumers. Whether businesses are bricks-and-mortar, 100% Web-based, or a
combination of both, they need to ask themselves the following questions:
• What is our new e-economy? What value do we provide within this economy and how can we be remunerated for it?
• What drives profit in this new economy?
• How does diversity and scale affect the profitability equation?
• How is real value delivered to our e-customers?
• What is the up-front cost versus the longer-term payoff? How will potentially deferred payback be factored into short-tem organizational cost and revenue objectives?
3.. The New business
When industries change and businesses' financial models change, that challenges a business' very reason for being. Every business must decide what their core business is and too often they get caught up by not noticing that their reason for being has changed.
Businesses don't adapt to their environment and they become extinct. This has been
happening even without the Web in the mix. Now, the chance of becoming extinct is even greater as industry structures, financial models and business purpose change more fundamentally and more quickly than they have before. To be sure of the business they're in businesses need to ask themselves the following questions:
• Am I still operating in the same market or even the same business?
• In what ways can my business become a superior service provider through dedication to e-servicing?
• How can my business go beyond traditional boundaries in:
o The products and services offered via our Web site. What's now adding value?
o The information we offer e-customers and the dialogue we have with them.
What new exchanges are most meaningful?
o How those products and services are delivered. What's easier, quicker, and more cost effective?
o The process that supports those products and services. What's now working smarter and harder for the e-customer?
4.. The New community
• Is my business leading or following?
o Are we motivating technology adoption within the industry? Among customers?
o Are we driving a change in customer behavior?
o Who else should be in our e-community and what should they contribute?
o What internal and external parties (customers, suppliers, other contributors) participate in my e-community?
Businesses need to consider how Web-based technologies can be applied across their interactions with many different audiences and decide on the connections that should, or could, exist. It is particularly important to consider how connections between an Intranet (serving an internal audience), the Internet (serving external customers), and extranets (serving external parties that have privileged access to Web-based information and functionality) enhance the functioning of the entire community.
Personally, I believe too much differentiation is made between intra-, inter- and extra- nets. The benefits of shared information and functionality—with different access for different audiences—seem to be overlooked because of segregation between projects and development processes within businesses.
Businesses need to keep a holistic view of the e-community they participate in and their role within it by asking themselves the following questions:
• How does cyberculture alter and enhance our business culture?
• How do we create connections with other e-citizens (see Marketing below).
5.. The e-customer
When a business' core business changes so does their customer base. The Web allows businesses to attract customers they may not have previously had any connection with.
Businesses can also create new products made possible by the Web. These new products generate new e-customers.
All businesses with a Web-based service offering need to be very clear about which e- customers relate to online products and which customers relate to offline products.
Businesses also need to be mindful of situations where a customer is both an online and offline customer so they can deal with those customers holistically. Businesses need to ask themselves the following questions:
• Who is our e-customer?
• Are we seeking new customers (new markets and/or increased market penetration)?
• What is our e-customer's "work" context? How has, and will, our e-customer's behavior change?
• How has access to information changed the balance of power in our e-customers' favor? How expert will our e-customer become?
• How technologically proficient is our e-customer?
• What technological infrastructure is our e-customer subject to (i.e., hardware and software capabilities?)
6.. The Level of customer integration
Businesses must decide how integrated their e-customers will be. In other words, businesses need to decide how much they will let e-customers have a direct impact on, and involvement with, business processes as a result of using their Web site.
It throws an interesting light on this question to relate intranet strategy to Internet strategy.
In her book The 21st-Century Intranet, Jennifer Stone Gonzalez provides four models that depict the way companies choose to approach their intranets: [1]
[1]The 21st Century Intranet by Stone-Gonzalez, ©1998. Reprinted by permission of Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.
1. The publication model: "I publish, you read."
2. The asymmetrical interaction model: "I ask, you respond—you ask I respond."
3. The symmetrical interaction model: "We all have a chance to talk and listen."
4. The synchronous virtual environment model: "This is the way we work together."
There are two dimensions to the above models: symmetry and synchronicity. As we move from the first to the fourth model the interaction between server and client becomes more synchronous as people "work" together in real time and information flows become more reciprocal.
While it is going a little too far to draw a direct analogy between the relationship between internal intranet clients (or employees) and companies and external e-customers, it does challenge us to think about customers as an integrated part of our business.
Figure 4-1 illustrates the potential scope of customer integration. Where do you think your company, sits, or will sit, on the above continuum, and why?
Of course, external customers will never be involved in "work," to the same extent as internal employees, but customers do "work," or complete activities, that allow them to get what they need, and want, as customers. Who knows how far customer integration will go in the future? How far you go in integrating e-customers is a key part of your strategy.
7.. E-services
Different businesses offer different levels of service on the Web. This is particularly true for bricks-and-mortar businesses that are migrating only some services to the Web, while keeping other service offerings offline. It is critical for businesses to be entirely clear on what their online value proposition is, and why.
Businesses that choose not to offer some services online may be missing out on
opportunities for improved customer service and competitive advantage. However, if not all of a business' customer base is online, it will make sense to offer services offline.
Businesses need to understand the necessary balance between online and offline services and must ask themselves the following questions:
Figure 4-1. Applying Intranet strategy to the customer integration decision.
• How broad is our e-service offering? Are we focused on one or a few key services?
• Are we enhancing existing services or creating new ones?
• Are we leveraging full-service capability to create integrated online solutions?
• Are we focused on e-commerce transactions or providing a broader e-service experience?
8.. Business readiness
Businesses need to have the right orientation and infrastructure to provide e-services and must ask themselves the following questions:
• What is our commitment to innovation?
• How quickly can we innovate; how agile can we become?
• What e-processes can we support?
• Do we have an information technology strategy in place? Does it address the application of Internet technologies across the business? Do policies exist on the way Internet technologies will be applied?
• Are we prepared to develop applications using Internet technologies, or will we buy a pre-established off-the-shelf product (i.e., what is our stance on the make- or-buy question)?
• What technological infrastructure can we establish and maintain to facilitate meaningful connectivity with e-customers? What can we do from day one, and what will we do later? Will we implement staged implementation (to take into account increasing levels of connectivity with internal systems allowing increasing customer integration and synchronicity over time)?
Businesses also need to be honest about the level of resources they have to complete the necessary Web site development, business process design and ongoing Web site
maintenance and support and must ask themselves the following questions:
• Will customer research, development, and consulting be outsourced or provided internally? Will cross-organizational teams be formed?
• If we can't maintain Web site hosting internally, will this be outsourced? How will this affect our ability to achieve connectivity with internal systems?
• What level of security can we offer e-customers and internal stakeholders?
• What capabilities do we have to publish Web site content and engage in content management?
• What resources and activities exist to keep our e-services and Web site interface current and functional?
• What support resource is available on a daily basis to provide assistance, answer inquiries, and service transactions?
2.. Marketing
As part of establishing e-business strategy, businesses need to develop a Web marketing plan. I could write a whole book just on Web marketing and the different approaches you
could employ—but that would be a different book from this one and, needless to say, good books on the topic exist already (see Bibliography). Here we will talk about the decisions businesses need to make at the requirement definition stage—because they affect the way their site is structured, designed, and supported.
When defining your Web marketing strategy you will need to address the following issues:
1. How do we create competitive advantage?
2. What is our brand and how is it positioned?
3. How do we practice marketing?
4. How is marketing integrated?
5. How do we define our audiences?
6. How do we use our Web site as a communications medium?
We will consider the questions requiring discussion in relation to each of these issues in turn.
1.. Competitive advantage
The Web has introduced new industries, economies, products, e-services and e-customers and this creates opportunities for competitive advantage. Businesses need to deliberately consider how the Web creates new opportunities for competitive advantage and must ask themselves the following questions:
• How can we be more customer-effective than our competitors?
• How can we offer better e-services than our competitors?
• How can we create more value in cyberspace than our competitors can, or do?
• How can we communicate better on the Web than our competitors?
• How can our Web site be superior in its information design, visual presentation, content and functionality?
• How can we build and maintain real-time relationships with select customers?
• What is the nature and degree of dialogue with e-customers? Are we engaged in one-way or two-way information flow and transactions?
• Do we need to learn more about e-customers, what and how?
2.. Branding and positioning
Businesses now have to manage e-brands as well as physical brands and they need to understand the effect that those brands have on each other. E-service brands can affect the value of physical brands and vice versa. For example, a bricks-and-mortar business might significantly enhance their brand by also establishing that brand as an e-brand.
However, some bricks-and-mortar brands may not be elastic enough to transfer to the Web. In other words, the bricks-and-mortar brand values make the e-brand unattractive.
In these cases, bricks-and-mortar businesses establish new e-brands that can be perceived as independent from their bricks-and-mortar brands. To decide on their relative brand
strategies and manage different brands businesses need to ask themselves the following questions:
• What is my e-brand? Am I enhancing existing brands and/or creating new brands?
• What is the value proposition surrounding our brand/s?
• What visual brand standards will transfer to the Web site and why?
3.. Marketing practice
The interactivity of the Web and the ability for e-customers to share information and capture that information against a personal profile provides marketers with new
opportunities to get to know e-customers. The Web is the medium that allows marketers to deliver on the market-of-one proposition. On the Web, delivering on a market-of-one proposition involves personalization of information and functionality that results in a customized e-service experience.
In addition, the Web is a service and communications channel that demands more singlemindedness and simplicity than physical channels, because those services and communications have to be delivered intuitively through a user interface. This is a good opportunity for businesses to rationalize and simplify their marketing approach.
Marketers must ask themselves the following questions:
• How does customer intelligence change the way we market?
• Can we avoid unnecessary brand and sub-brand proliferation to achieve an integrated and seamless online presence?
• Can we avoid unnecessary product and feature proliferation to make e-customer decision making and selection as clean and convenient as possible?
• What behavior do we want to encourage and what rewards/responses will we provide in relation to particular customer activities/behaviors?
4.. Integrated marketing
It has always been important for businesses to engage in integrated marketing where all media channels and their respective marketing messages combine to optimal affect. The Web is another medium that must be integrated into the marketing effort. Marketing strategies and plans should include the Web as much as any other medium. Marketers must ask themselves the following questions:
• How will our marketing approach and activities be integrated with the experience that customers have on our Web site?
o In what way will marketing messages be tied into (linked) to our Web site?
o How will existing market relationships be embodied on our Web site?
What new relationships can be created?
o How will content and functionality reflect or support marketing activities?
o In what ways will our positioning statement be tangibly demonstrated on our Web site?
o How do we launch new products on the Web, and how is this an integrated part of any product launch plan?
o How do we modify new products or the way we market them—how does this dynamism and process need to be translated into Web site content and design?
o How often do we launch and modify new products, and how will new products be added to our Web site on an ongoing basis?
o How do we plan and manage campaigns, and how will the Web be factored into our planning as a campaign tool?
What campaign content will need to be provided on our Web site—how frequent will our campaigns be and how explicitly do we want to link Web site campaign content and promotion in other media?
Will we set up separate (but linked) "mini" Web sites for specific campaigns or populate campaign content to a common Web site?
(Bear in mind that you can provide different URLs to give
customers access to a common Web site and track the effectiveness of different marketing collateral such as direct mail letters or broadcast advertising. You do not have to create a separate Web site to track entry against campaign-specific URLs. Mini sites can be useful in supporting shorter-term banner advertising or
sponsorship, but they do make it more difficult for the customer to keep a holistic view of your service offering.)
• How, will integrated marketing activities affect the expected number of visitors to our site; for example, if we include our Web site URL on TV ads, will this cause surges in visitor traffic and when? How do we anticipate and plan for these surges?
5.. Audience definition
Marketers need to define e-customers as much as they have always had to define any customer in order to market to them. Marketers must ask themselves the following questions:
• Are we focused on attracting new or existing customers, or do we need to maintain both pursuits in parallel?
• How do we deal with different audiences acquired as a result of unprompted site visits?
• Do we want our audiences to self-select themselves on our Web site?
• Are our audiences local or international?
• Do we need to cater to different levels of e-customers (e.g., novice and savvy users)?
• Do we need to limit the use of some technologies based on the likely PC, connection, and browser version used by our audiences?
• How will visitors find their way to our Web site, where are they likely to be coming from, what are they likely to be prompted by? Knowing this, how can we make it easier for e-customers to find our Web site (see Communication below)?
• How will we use the Web to get to know our e-customers better?
6.. Communication
Marketers must know how to optimize the Web as a communications medium, both as part of their marketing mix and in relation to communications required in relation to e- customers in particular.
Marketers should develop Webmarketing plans that detail the online marketing techniques they will use to promote their Web site offering and generate visitors to a business' Web site (see Netography for links to online resources on Webmarketing techniques). In doing so, Marketers should ask themselves the following questions:
• How do I best utilize the Web as a communications medium? Where does the Web fit in our marketing mix?
• How does the Web enhance communication with our e-customers (bearing in mind that the Web is intimate and immediate and allows information "push,"
where information is sent out to a selected audience as well as information "pull,"
where audiences select themselves by coming to our Web site)?
• Do we need to educate customers to adopt new online business processes? What do we need to do to encourage customer learning and comfort with new
technology and processes?
• To what degree do I need to "sell" to e-customers—-how familiar are they with our company and our product and service offering?
• How explicitly will we involve customers online—will they generate their own content for their own viewing or the viewing and comment of others?
• What feedback do we want from customers? Will this be prompted or unprompted?
Will we explicitly allow customers to submit complaints, and how will these be resolved?
• How much contribution will e-customers make to Web site development and how explicit will this be? Will we tell e-customers about the changes we've made on the basis of their feedback?
• Who will be involved in generating content on our Web site (in addition to our company), customers, suppliers, related vendors, lobby groups, other contributors?
For example, if you and your customers deal extensively with another third party, your Web site could provide the platform for that third party to directly publish content of use to your customers—this will save you having to create and manage content on behalf of a third party. (Bear in mind, however, that you will need to put controls in place to manage the quality of content populated to your site.)
• What are the benefits and constraints of facilitating cross-customer
communication (through community-type components) on our Web site; e.g., do customers wish to remain anonymous, are they hesitant to share precious
knowledge that gives them an advantage, or can they all benefit from sharing and pooling their knowledge?