e-Business Strategy

Leveraging the Internet

 
The evolution of the Internet into an efficient platform for commerce and for information in general has hastened the commoditisation of products and services. Industries that had been historically buffered from severe competition by supply/demand imbalances or channel inefficiencies suddenly found themselves thrust into harsh new market realities. The electronic B2B and B2C exchanges that have emerged have levelled the distribution playing field, driven fierce price competition, and fostered the development of new business models across many industries.

Yet the rise of e-Business has also enabled significant supply-chain cost efficiencies, spurred innovation of products and services, and provided a wellspring of information for companies large and small to de-commoditise the customer relationship. It has also led to the proliferation of new markets and businesses that provide the infrastructure and services of the new e-Business economy.

Despite the ongoing severe industry shakeout, the full potential of e-Business has yet to be realised. Supply chain management has been a major focus of e-Business investment to date, but many practitioners are unable to quantify the specific cost savings, and there remain enormous opportunities to capture tangible value. Many companies are just beginning to leverage the value of customer information and the customer facing "touch points" that e-Business provides in creating new customer-based assets and managing customer relationships. The opportunity to bond with customers offers significant economic value in retention and shelter from commodity-based price competition. Other companies have yet to fully align their e-Business strategy with their overall corporate strategy to maximise return on their substantial investments in this area. And the suppliers of e-Business infrastructure, content, and services face major challenges in steering their own business models through an uncertain economic and competitive climate.

Omniton has a wealth of experience in developing e-Business strategies for both traditional "bricks-and-mortar" clients as well as new business start-ups across a broad range of industry segments, including content provider, service provider, platform/software infrastructure, and exchange. Our work in this area has encompassed strategy development, market planning, pricing, product definition, customer economics, competitive analysis and M&A evaluation.

Our experience in e-Business has taught us several important rules which we rigorously apply to our work in this area:

• Drive the strategy from the customer perspective and understand the impact on the customer's economics
• Align the strategy with execution
• Develop metrics to quantify the benefits
• Be adaptive — implement quickly, gather market feedback, and iterate