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E-Business Facilitating Your Business Processes |
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By Vadim Kotelnikov, Founder, Ten3 BUSINESS e-COACH Innovation Unlimited!, 1000ventures.com
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"E-business is not an IT challenge." T.Kyle Quinn, Director, e-Business Information Systems, Boeing Co.
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Why E-business? Business and technology are now inextricably linked. Today, e-business is just business, a real business. There are no technology decisions that are not business decisions, and there are no business decisions today that don't involve technology, according to Jim Cassidy, IBM's Director Asia-Pacific. Business processes must not only incorporate timely company information for improved customer relationship management, supply chain management, and beyond, they must also be kept up-to-date with fast-changing business needs. E-business facilitating these processes is the way most business soon will be transacted. Whether or not you ever plan to sell products or services over the Web, your most important customer or supplier may one day insist upon using Web for all transaction.
Internet Power The Internet changes the fundamental nature of doing business and competition. As new ways of building and delivering products and services online emerge, your competition goes beyond established competitors to include new companies, in addition to new innovations, ideas or ways of improving existing processes or products... More The "connected enterprise" is a business organization that experiences reduced costs, improved efficiencies and enhanced customer relationships as a result of effectively leveraging the Internet and private IP networks to exchange business data, securely, reliably, and auditably between internal operations and B2B processes.
Enterprise-wide Business Process Management IT is increasingly required to align with business objectives. It's no longer acceptable to gather system and application performance data that only the technical staff can interpret and leverage. Corporate managers increasingly look to IT for data, presented in their own "language," that helps business and technology managers collaborate in assessing the impact of application and system performance on broad-based business objectives. A key implication of this requirement is managing the entire life-cycle of an application, and not just individual stages of development, testing, deployment, and operations. End-to-end performance of the total e-business ecosystem is essential. Managing the Web server "storefront" is useless unless you manage end-to-end application performance. Today, the market is seeing the emergence of more flexible management approaches, in contrast to monolithic framework approaches that are intolerant of third-party products and traditional best-of-breed management products that don't let you manage the total ecosystem... More Business Process Management System (BPMS) The BPMS is a new category of management software that opens a new era for IT-powered business infrastructure. It "enables companies to model, deploy and manage mission-critical business processes, that span multiple enterprise applications, corporate departments, and business partners behinds the firewall and over the Internet."7... More Bridging the IT/Business Divide: Aligning Goals to Achieve Performance
Ensuring IT alignment with the business has
traditionally been viewed as the CIO's job.
One commonly used methodology is the "IT/Business Alignment Cycle", which introduces a simple framework that the IT organization can adopt to manage a broad range of activities. The four phases of the cycle are: plan, model, manage, and measure. Following this cycle fosters organization-wide shared expectations between business and IT managers, and defines a common framework for a broad range of activities that together serve to align IT and business objectives. The cycle also identifies best practices and common processes within and between IT functional groups to make IT/business alignment sustainable and scalable. This framework functions best when integrated and automated with software applications and monitoring tools. By committing to the cycle and integrating and automating activities using software solutions, CIOs can align their whole organization to make systematic improvements that overcome obstacles.... More What IT Leadership Look Like? To succeed as an IT leader, you need to develop the business management skills. The 2005 CIO.com list of Ones to Watch includes folks, mostly directors and VPs, who appear headed for the CIO suite. More than ever before, their skills go beyond the purely technical; they exhibit vision, the ability to influence others and a knack for getting things done. A wish list includes 11 traits of a true IT leader. Some examples: fluency in both technology and the business, the ability to work at tactical and strategic levels simultaneously, marketing competence, consummate communication skills, and a readiness to stretch beyond core competencies.4 Finding such people isn't easy. "They need to be good at a lot of things," says Agnoli, awards judge and CIO of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham. "They have to be able to delve from the really high-level stuff all the way down to the minutiae, sometimes at the same time. It's a very difficult skill set to find, so you want to hold on to them." There are some telltale signs that an IT leader is or should be headed for the top. Leading companies recognized for their rising-star status in the IT world, display three overarching characteristics the wise CIO will watch out for. They have vision, often taking creative approaches to solving business problems. They exhibit influence, with superior communication skills and the ability to build consensus. And they get things done, executing enterprisewide projects successfully time and time again... More The Rise of the IT Architect
IT architects are in growing demand. They
are
cross-functionally excellent people who can "tie several silos of
expertise together," relate to business problems as well as technology, and
then sell their ideas upward and downward in the corporate hierarchy. The
position of IT architect has become increasingly important to the
ever-changing IT industry, and is one that established corporations and
start-ups are seeking.
"As IT positions become more specialized and include increasingly detailed responsibilities, there's a need for someone who can tie several silos of expertise together," says Al Volvano, a product manager for Microsoft's Learning Group. "Enterprise architects aren't just technology experts; they are leaders with broad IT knowledge, the savvy to apply it to business problems and the communication skills necessary to coordinate the people who will put their plans into action," says Bill Liguori, senior vice president and co-founder of the placement firm Leadership Capital Group. 5... More Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) EAI is software that enables business process integration and business-to-business (B2B) collaboration by allowing data sharing between unrelated systems in an organization and beyond. EAI enables business not only to unify information throughout an enterprise, most importantly it also provides the flexibility to add functionality, such as sales force management, customer relationship management (CRM), or more, without rendering existing systems obsolete. EAI serves as a just-in-time information manager that helps data move along as processes require. Applications do not need to be modified to connect to and share data through the EAI architecture. Specifications and rules can be modified, accommodating changes in one application without affecting the other systems or interfaces. Start with an Agreed-upon Plan If you decided to integrate e-business into your entire enterprise, start with a roadmap an agreed-upon plan with mutually acknowledged mileposts for tracking achievement of success. It would allow you to grow faster, to be more productive, and more satisfied with the progress toward becoming an e-business. Planning Process The e-business implementation process includes evaluating a company's supply chain, its customer relationship, and an e-business assessment survey. This survey would enable your company to benchmark your e-business progress against similar-sized companies. To identify business opportunities, risks and process improvements, you require good understanding of how suppliers, distributors, retailers, ultimate end users, joint venture partners, and even competitors interrelate. Depicting your company's various relationships with suppliers, vendors, and customers graphically in a "Value Web" can help your company leaders and advisers to understand better how they integrate with each other. This would enable you to plan the right balance of systems, to address both the front end and the back end of your business. Articulating ROI "Companies have to articulate ROI, calculate business value and make the case of any investment the company is considering, whether its the next factory or the next product. It is important for companies to create optimal conditions for making the right decisions at the right time," writes Stacy Smith,6 CIO of Intel Corp. "One of the best practices for a company is to view IT as a business; one that can measure, manage and deliver business value. Companies should use consistent and repeatable methodology to predict and track project value before, during and post-implementation. This includes measurement and management of total IT costs to make people, processes and technology visible and quantifiable. By measuring the business value of IT, companies can optimize resource allocation and remain focused on continuous improvement while getting a clear picture of IT contributions to the companies bottom line. " Case in Point Intel Corp. By using consistent and repeatable methodology to predict and track project value before, during and post-implementation, Intel Corp. managed to cut costs and generate business value, writes Stacy Smith, CIO of Intel Corp.6 The transformation began at the end of 2001, when senior management challenged the IT department to prove the ROI of its solutions. The result was a program that focused on quantifiable metrics designed to ensure that IT products, services and support delivered real business value. Rather than focusing on traditional IT metrics such as network capacity and uptake, the company looked at things like customer satisfaction and profitability.
Several methods can be used to streamline IT and implement the two-pronged strategy which uses IT to streamline process and gain efficiency, then use savings to invest in high-potential technology solutions that fundamentally change the way people work and what they can achieve. In short, its finding a way to cut costs while generating business value. |
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