Techweb article mention Jacada:
December 20, 1999, Issue: 874
Section: A CRN Special Report -- E-Business Takes Off!
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Dragging Customers Into E-Business
Kelly Gollobin & Steven Burke
New York-Culture shock is often the biggest obstacle to getting customers to invest in E-business.
While most companies know they need to establish a Web presence, many are not willing to make investments or change underlying business models to adapt to the Internet economy, said technology and solution providers attending the eBusiness Conference and Expo held here last week.
E-commerce efforts hit roadblocks because of a lack of leadership and accountability among management teams, said Cisco Systems Inc. Chief Information Officer Peter Solvik.
"Technical challenges don't tend to be the biggest challenges for companies undergoing an Internet transformation. It tends to be cultural and leadership. Technology without strategy, without the leadership, without the direction, without the accountability, leaves you all dressed up with no place to go," Solvik said.
"We know of companies in our industry that built Web sites saying they would be at 50 percent E-commerce [sales] in four months, and they've gotten nowhere," Solvik said. "They thought all they needed to do was turn on their E-commerce system."
But even with the right leadership, when businesses forget to focus on their customers, even the slickest technology cannot save them from failure when it comes to implementing an Internet strategy, executives said.
For example, Stephen Polley, chairman of Cozone.com, the Internet store for Dallas-based CompUSA Inc., knows his customers are different from those of Amazon.com Inc.
"Unlike Amazon.com, people don't call them up after opening the box and say, 'This John Grisham book doesn't work,' " Polley said.
Realizing many dot.com companies routinely take a hands-off attitude toward their customers, Cozone.com decided to be hands-on and placed its customer-service number at the top of every Web page, said Polley. Support is a major concern for the site.
It often is difficult to find a toll-free customer number on many Web sites, Polley said.
The issues involved in deploying E-business solutions are different for larger companies, integrators and customers said.
While branding the site is less of a challenge, integrating disparate systems is problematic.
Tying legacy systems, order entry and warehouse systems into the Internet present big technical challenges, said customers and their solution partners.
This was the case for Porsche Cars North America Inc., which is launching a business-to-business site for Porsche dealers next spring. The company had to tie into an IBM AS/400 system in Germany to pull off its Internet site and provide it with updated corporate information, said John Jacobs, manager, dealer and field systems at Porsche.
"We could not really touch that legacy code. There are some ways in which the project could have been smoother had we had that luxury, but that wasn't possible," he said.
Instead, Porsche Cars North America worked with Deloitte & Touche and Jacada Ltd., an Atlanta-based Java E-Business software maker that provided a work-around in which an Internet browser interface was placed on the existing AS/400 host system.
Tips for VARs
- Focus on meeting customers' cultural and leadership challenges, rather than just technical solutions.
- A hands-on strategy, such as Cozone.com's decision to place its customer-service number at the top of every Web page, can pay off.
- Resellers serving large companies must concentrate on integrating disparate systems.
Copyright © 1999 CMP Media Inc.
Link: techweb.com
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