On the client side, integrated systems which face outward allow customers to access and manage their own accounts 24/7 in ways that were unheard of just a few years ago. Your customers can review, change and track the status of their orders all the way through the system, from authorization and ordering, through fulfillment, shipping and settlement. Real time event notification provides them with the information they need to catch and fix problems before they become serious. Access to their account history can provide them with the tools they need to plan and time their purchases. Automated, on-line service centers allow them to help themselves, or even each other, conserving your Customer Service resources and providing them with better service and an increased sense of community. Agents and other tracking software can make accurate and often non-intuitive real-time inferences about your customer's needs and interests, providing them with a higher level of personal attention and providing you with additional point-of-sale opportunities for up and cross-selling.

On the enterprise side, sophisticated software suites allow customer transactions to filter seamlessly through the enterprise, integrating and synchronizing data which is used by resource management and accounting systems. This approach not only streamlines workflow, it provides corporate decision makers with real-time data and trend analysis for Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relations Management, and Supply Chain Management.

     As you would expect, these systems are not cheap. The cost of designing, purchasing, and implementing Web-based, fully integrated e-business systems for small to medium sized manufacturers can easily run into the millions. They typically require large, specialized teams and the development of custom software elements which allow Web servers to interface with your existing IT resources. The payoff is that they allow you to leverage the embedded cost of your legacy systems into customer-facing solutions. The downside is that they sometimes also involve significant changes to your infrastructure and your business methods. While disintermediation and channel conflicts can bring new challenges to the management team, the introduction of these additional efficiencies can have a significant impact on the bottom line. For many businesses, the savings of one dollar in the cost of doing business can easily equal the profits from four or five dollars in additional sales.

Most of the companies who are moving to these systems have been doing business on the Web for a while, and have already assimilated the changes in their business model which are necessary to be successful on the internet. If you ask them what they discovered along the way, here's what many of them will tell you... "you can't make markets on the Web." While it is true that if you build it they will come, it is also true that your customers will be deciding whether the playing field has bases or goal posts or a net, and they will ultimately be making the rules. They have a lot of questions and high expectations, and they want good service and straight answers. If they can't get those things from you, it's no big deal... your competitors are just a mouse click away. The companies that got it, like Dell and UPS and Cisco and Amazon, are leveraging the efficiencies and data mining capabilities of these integrated systems to help them manage customer relations and supply chains, sense trends, shape demand, and generally beat the tar out of their competitors. The thousands of fledgling companies that didn't get it are now littering the bottom of the ocean.

For this reason, we usually recommend that established companies that are new to the Web start by developing a basic presence, then shift to e-commerce, then e-business. If you're relatively new to the web, don't try to jump too many steps at once. Take your time. Let them know you're out there, then encourage them to tell you what they want. Your customers want you to succeed. While their answers may surprise you, they will also help you to plan your next move in the least painful way. Maximum effectiveness. Minimum bruises.

     Note: If you intend to do any kind of commerce on the Web, you'll need to establish a budget for maintaining security. When the Web was young and primarily populated by college professors and techno-geeks engaged in lively discussions about the possibilities for dense wave-division multiplexing, most people didn't bother to lock their digital doors. Now that commerce and interconnectivity have arrived on the Web in a big way, raiding the resultant repositories of personal information and corporate secrets has become big business. Recently, a group of crackers, allegedly from a former eastern-bloc country, strolled through a gaping security hole in Microsoft's Internet Server software and walked off with 250,000 active credit card numbers belonging to the customers of a large on-line music store. The thieves generously offered to return the numbers to the vendor in exchange for a huge ransom. The vendor refused, after which 25,000 of the account numbers were released on the Net, followed by the expected feeding frenzy. While Microsoft had been apprised of the security hole 18 months earlier and published a patch to close it, the story is that the vendor's IT staff never applied the patch. While we can't quote you the exact cost of retiring, reconciling, and reinitializing 250,000 credit card accounts, we think it's a safe bet to say that in a case like this somebody's going to get sued. This isn't really the worst of it, because once you violate your customer's trust, your business is pretty much toast anyway. That being said, here's a suggestion... If any kind of sensitive information about your business or your customers is living on a computer which touches the internet, you would be wise to think about how you are going to protect it from the hordes of high-tech marauders who tirelessly cruise the wires looking for opportunities. We're not in Mayberry anymore.

While a full-blown makeover of your IT infrastructure can set your company back to the tune of $500,000 or more, the cost of developing an intelligently expandable presence on the Internet can be surprisingly small. If you already have an established identity and you're willing to forego the high-tech tinsel, you can have a very nice starter site on the air in a few months for under $10,000. Even though they are typically basic image and identity pieces, properly designed, executed, and promoted starter sites can be a very cost-effective alternative to print.

When you're ready to make the commitment to move out onto the Internet, don't forget to add a little to the budget to cover the costs of dealing with the mountains of e-mail generated in the process of doing business over the network. The Web is primarily a conversation, and even if you're just starting out, it's absolutely critical that you establish methods for routing and answering the inevitable stream of additional e-mail that you'll receive. Ideally, everyone in your organization will take a turn at helping your customers. Many of the big boys do it that way, and the "ear to the ground" corporate culture which develops from habits like this will help to keep you from being blind sided when the market changes directions.

    If you'd like to talk about the possibility of developing or expanding your Web presence, call us (we love to talk) at 773.508.0436 and ask for a copy of our Project Profiler. It's free and there's no obligation.

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