Chapter Two

Spotting E-Business
Trends
What is a Trend?
A trend is a compass for navigating a sea of
chaos
Points the way to a new
– Themes, like “aging demographics” or “decreasing
attention spans”
– Cost curves - like Moore’s Law - decreasing
hardware and computing costs
– Innovation - mobile devices

Trends are essential filters for managers so that

they can separate signal from noise
“Look Before, or you’ll find yourself behind.”
- Benjamin Franklin

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E-Business Trends
Trends: spotting, analyzing, and exploiting
themes in technology, markets, etc.
– Ways to think further into the future
– Identify ideas that will impact and disrupt business

Strategy: how to exploit e-business trends to

create profits
– Screen opportunities, identify value
– Translate trends into opportunities
– Translate opportunities into strategy

Trend-spotting drives strategy

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E-Business Trends
Customer trends
– Faster Service
– Self service
– More Product Choices
– Integrated solutions, not piecemeal products

E-service - service and process trends

– Convergence of sales and service
– Seamless Support
– Flexible fulfillment convenient delivery
– Increased Process Visibility

“The rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.”

- Warren Buffet (CEO Berkshire Hathaway)

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E-Business Trends (cont.)
Organizational trends
– Outsourcing -- retain the core, outsource the rest
– Contract manufacturing
– Virtual Distribution, Private hubs and Public exchanges

Employee Trends
– Hiring the Best and Brightest
– Keeping talented employees

Enterprise technology trends

– Integrated enterprise apps
– Multi-Channel Integration -- user view integration
– Middleware -- back-end integration

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E-Business Trends (cont.)
General Technology Trends
– Wireless Web Applications
– Handheld Computing and Information Appliances
– Infrastructure convergence
– Application Service Providers
– Web Services
– E-learning tools and methods

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Consumer Trends: Faster Service
People want to maximize their limited available
time
– Value for the time
– Getting things done right everytime
– Right levels of service
– Entertaining and engaging experiences

Often, the answer is to integrate previously

separate processes in fulfilling orders

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Consumer Trends: 100 Years of Convenience
1893 – Sears and Roebuck offers first catalog
1993 – Sears folds catalog operation
1997 – online retailing takes off
2000 – Amazon.com sends out print catalogs

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Self-Service: Empowered Customers
Self-Service is Maturing
– 24/7 ordering without sales personnel
– Disintermediation

source: www.s1.com

Self-Service complementing Full-service:

Example from the Insurance Industry
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Integrated Solutions, Not Piecemeal
Products
One-stop life-needs providers
– Wal-Mart

One-stop lifestyle providers

– The Gap

One-stop life-path providers

– Toys-R-Us

Long term drivers and demand for

integrated solutions are clear

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Integrated Solutions, Not Piecemeal Products
Past -- Product-based Today -- Solution-based
competition competition
Product • Comprehensive range of
Product and products and services
functionality • Solution-oriented
service • Integrated & Personalized

• Lifetime value approach

Price Value • What is the total cost of
ownership
• What is the ROI?

• Customer self-service
Customer • Configurations geared to
Service empower- needs
• Simplified decision-making
ment

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e-Service Trends: Integrated Sales and
Service
Cross-selling and up-selling while providing
service.

Home Depot is in “perpetual service mode.”

Users expect more from a web site

Customers demand customized and

consistent experience across channels
and products

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Seamless Support: Consistent and Reliable
Customer Service
An interesting experience with AT&T
– Getting a bill for $0.00
– Receiving collection notices for $0.00

Moving from transactional only sites to

relationship sites
– Must integrate marketing, selling and customer
service into all aspects of the business and
customer experience

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Flexible Fulfillment and Convenient Service
Delivery
• Consumers expect prompt and accurate delivery of the
goods they have ordered.

• Expectation -- “We’ll put up a website and ship stuff out. It’ll

be great!”

• Result – Fulfillment is hard. Lots of .com fatalities after Xmas

1999

• Our understanding -- Catalog and Online fulfillment is hard:

– Average order size of 1.7 items
– Picking individual items
– No bulk shipments, individually packed

• It’s the supply chain, Stupid!

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Online Fulfillment
• Manufacturer sends less-than truckloads (LTL) to
warehouse
• Cases stored in pallet racking
• Cases moved to pick area
• Workers pick items out of case, put in box, send to
customer via FedEx, USPS, UPS

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Increase Process Visibility
• Let the customer have access to your tracking
system

• Provide visibility into the supply chain

Wholesale
Suppliers Manufacturers Retailers Customers
Distributors

Information Flows
Goods Flow

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Organizational Trends: Outsourcing
• Focus on core competencies

• Cost reduction on a global scale – IT enabled

outsourcing models

• Global service outsourcing trends not local

outsourcing anymore

Virtual enterprise designs– Requirement

Boundary Spanning Coordination

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Contract Manufacturing: Become Brand
Intensive
Separation of marketing and manufacturing,
allowing companies to specialize in one or the
other

Sara Lee example: “Move from a capital/asset

(or manufacturing) intensive company to a
knowledge (and marketing) intensive firm”

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Empower Employees
• Give employees greater autonomy, decision
making capability, advancement based on
performance, e.g. Nordstrom

• Employee retention

• Don’t give employees technology, give them

solutions

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Enterprise Technology Trends: Integrated
Enterprise Applications
Build vs Buy

ERP software: SAP, PeopleSoft, Baan

Best-of-Breed Approach
● Individual networked
applications
● Individual interfaces
● Overhead of maintenance
● Data replication
● High lifecycle costs
mySAP.com
● Seamless integration
● Open integration
architecture
● Highly flexible for new
business requirements
(SCM, eProcurement, BI,
CRM)

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Multi-channel Integration: Look at the Big
Picture
Consistent service regardless of which of the
company’s channels the consumer is using.

Example: Banks with branches, ATMs, call

center, etc.

Web

Call center
Branch

ATM, In-store

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Middleware: Support the Integration
Mandate
• Integrate old and new applications so that all
data is available.

• Middleware

• Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)

• What’s Next – Web Services

– Break large scale apps into smaller chunks
– Reassemble those components into services
– Aggregate internal and external information
services

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General Technology Trends: Wireless
Applications
Shift away from a PC-centric dependence
towards a next-generation multi-device
accessibility
Internet will be embedded in an endless variety
of applications
Embedded Internet appliances will appear in the
familiar form of washing machine, television,
and remote control
Most successful devices will be easy-to-use,
task-oriented devices
– Leverage benefits of Internet access to enhance
their core functionalities
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Handheld Computing and Information
Appliances

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Infrastructure Convergence: Voice, Data and
Video
• Voice, data, video on same network
– Goal: Unification of voice and data to support
customer contact anywhere, anytime, via any
channel.

• Improved speed and quality

• New customer contact points (eg Web TV)

– Interesting research strategy via WebTV

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Infrastructure Convergence: Voice, Data and
Video

Voice
Office
Device
Independence Intranet

• Mobile IP
Travel • Content
Hotspots Web
Translation
• Quality of
Service Calendar
• VPN
Home
• Content Email
Networks

Vacation
Hotspots
Communication

E-Learning

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Trend Common Attributes
• Effectiveness

• Efficiency

• Integration

• Ability to handle change

The core aspect in trend-watching is

balancing exuberance vs. uncertainty

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E-Business
Strategies, Inc.
www.ebstrategy.com
contact@ebstrategy.com
678-339-1236 x201
Fax - 678-339-9793