eBusiness Strategy

Most companies now recognise that it is essential to have a well thought out ebusiness strategy that clearly shows how Information Systems and Information Technology (the applications and the hardware) will support the business objectives over the next few years. This is particularly important in a dynamically changing business environment (which means just about any business environment these days). The ebusiness strategy must take account of the business uncertainties and recognise that key business decisions will be taken in the future, and that you cannot always predict the outcomes of these decisions.

We have seen many cases where a strategy is prepared for a business, but actually is remote from the real business needs. Almost invariably, the document ends up in a cupboard gathering dust. From our experience there are a few simple steps that can be taken to ensure that the ebusiness strategy is really meaningful and can be understood by non-technical directors and managers.

There are plenty of learned books that will tell you how to develop an ebusiness strategy, or how to get the maximum advantage from your ebusiness investment. This short note is not meant to supplant any of these valuable sources, but is meant to capture a few simple lessons from our experience.

Given below are ten lessons that we have learned; they all centre on developing a series of conversations that allow the ebusiness strategy to evolve, and ensure that there is broad endorsement of the strategy.

1. Don’t rush into developing the ebusiness strategy until you understand what is going on in the company.

• Take time to talk to business and IT managers.
   

• Understand the current company organisation and personalities - find out who the thought leaders are. What are the company decision-making processes (both formal and informal)?
   

• Understand the company strategy and tactical plans - and not just from the written documents, because they may just have been dredged out of the same dusty cupboard referred to above. Find out what is really going on, and the range of possibilities about what may happen in the future.
   

• Understand the current IT environment, and its strengths and weaknesses. What are the IT tactical and strategic plans?

2. Understand the key decision points that are likely to occur as the business moves forward. All of these decision points will have an impact upon the ebusiness strategy, and you need to ensure that you allow for this possible impact.

3. Understand the business and IT environment that surrounds the company. For example, who else is operating in the same sphere; what are they doing, and what are their plans? What are the service and consulting companies doing? What opportunities for the future does all this offer?

4. Prepare a first cut of the requirements for IT as the business moves forward. What can you see as innovative uses for IT? Be bold - you are moving towards a straw-man strategy and you should be seeking to include as many ideas as possible. For example, what are the opportunities for sharing commodity IT with other companies? Challenge how much competitive advantage is really gained from most use of IT.

5. Develop a straw-man of the ebusiness strategy, overlaid on the key business decision points. This should show the alternative usage of IT depending on the outcome of these key decision points.

6. For each IT alternative contained in your straw-man prepare an estimate of costs, manpower implications and risks.

7. Draw up a road-map (or a series of road-maps) that shows how the ebusiness strategy would unfold according to a variety of business decisions. This will test the robustness of the strategy, and will clearly show some of the risks associated with key business decisions.

8. This tends to be a good time to formally present the ebusiness strategy to the business board. Get them to contribute and decide which road-maps do not need to be included in the documented ebusiness strategy.

9. Agree on who has ownership for the implementation of the strategy, and for ensuring that it stays in line with the evolving business needs. Agree the process by which the implementation of the strategy will be regularly reviewed.

10. Taking the feedback from the business board, complete the documentation of the ebusiness strategy.

 

This article was written by Bernie Vincent of The Eminent Trading Company Limited

Email: bernie@ebusiness-gateway.co.uk 

© The Eminent Trading Company Limited 2002-2003.

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