Opinion: The Observer
While companies are eager to tout their E-business strategies, a surprising few are successfully executing them, Lou Bertin writes in The Observer. Read his view of what's causing the disconnect.


E-Business' Dirty Little Secret
By Lou Bertin

For those of us who have the good fortune to get paid for dispensing our opinions in 750-word doses, it can be useful to flip back through some past musings to see how on target (or off target) our predictions of months passed turn out to be.

In the case of a column that appeared in this space 18 months ago, it seems that while the underlying premise was correct, the prediction offered therein has proven to be far off the mark. The column dealt with E-business. Its premise--that businesses of any and all stripes are inexorably evolving into E-businesses whether they realize it or not--is indeed proving true. Organizations are indeed becoming E-businesses, whether through their own initiative or through external forces that are driving them in that direction.

However, the prediction that was offered--namely, that organizations and institutions would in droves undertake customized Marshall Plans of sorts to rebuild and re-create themselves based on E-business-centered principles--thus far has proven to be far off the mark.

The dirty little secret within corporate and institutional America seems to be that while E-business and the move thereto is universally given lip service, a lamentable few organizations have fully embraced the technologies, techniques, and mind-set required to fully capitalize on the opportunity to realize the indisputable benefits that E-business delivers.

That opinion is based on conversations and observations with dozens of IT and business executives during the past several months. During several roundtable conversations with dozens of InformationWeek readers and attendees at CMP Media's E-Business Conference and Expo (to my mind, the best possible sources of insight and an invaluable collective reality check as to what's really going on) in the months since the above-referenced column appeared, precious little has changed where E-business is concerned.

The sampling may or may not be statistically significant, but what is philosophically significant is that a minuscule percentage of the organizations whose representatives I've gotten to know have made the embrace of E-business one of their operational imperatives.

More surprising (or depressing, depending on your point of view) is how quick others are to admit that they aren't far along at all in their move to meet customer demands--not to mention react to competitive pressures--that can only be fulfilled by making E-business at least part of their corporate capabilities.

The comments that preface the thoughts of the snaillike adopters fall into three basic categories. Say some: "We've formed a cross-departmental task force to come up with our E-business strategy and our report is due [fill in the months-away blank]." Or: "Management is telling us that we need to become an E-business, but they're not willing to invest." Best of all: "E-business really isn't something we need to invest in. Our industry isn't based on that kind of model." Wrong, wrong, and more wrong.

Thousands of success stories put the lie to that sort of mind-set. Moreover, those success stories--both on the business-to-business and business-to-consumer sides of the equation--don't produce anything new. The success stories all deal with organizations that quite simply have found a better way to purvey their goods or services, be those best sellers, scrap lumber, or salad fixings.

Scarier still to the ostrich organizations too weak of will or simply too fearful to move of their own volition to an E-business model is the fact that none of the success stories would have turned up on any but the most sophisticated of competitive radar screens. Put another way, it's now completely safe to assume that whether you sell lumber or lumbar supports, there's another company out there that's completely unknown to you and is fixing to dot-com its way into a position where it's going to eat your market share for lunch. And soon.

The best--and certainly most succinct--rules of engagement for simply holding one's own ground in E-business battles were offered months ago at an InformationWeek roundtable when a finance industry CIO said his shop has adopted a "ready, fire, aim" philosophy where E-business is concerned.

Similar thinking has been voiced at virtually all gatherings where the subject of E-business has been under discussion. Still, though, one is left to reasonably wonder whether the level of E-business adoption we've seen is merely the tip of an iceberg or whether there's no iceberg at all, and we're simply seeing in full a nice (and slowly growing) mass of organizations doing interesting and profitable things while many companies sit back and play by the "business-as-usual" rules.

As perilous to the ego as offering prognostications might be, the absolutely safe prediction is that any of us who buy from, sell to, or invest in companies that fall into the latter category had best get busy finding alternative outlets. Our old reliables won't be around too much longer.

Lou Bertin is an industry consultant
Article posted here with permission