Former Telstra executive Andrew Grill, now CEO of a property site (sees Australian strategies), makes an impassioned call for 'business-smart technologists'
So much has been written about ecommerce and the “new economy” lately, but little has been written about what should you actually believe and what it all means to you and your company.
A year ago, I heard CEOs saying to their staff “we must be in ecommerce or on the internet” – and literally telling their staff to “just do it”, without any real understanding of what benefits ecommerce may bring and if indeed their company was ready to benefit from ecommerce.
In 2001, there may still be some brave CEOs willing to “just do it” but, if like me, you might be a little nervous in the wake of the tech wreck, the collapse of many online businesses and significant staff cuts in the industry.
Time to switch on
But the industry holds many benefits if an effort is
made to understand it. For example, did you know that
most of the savings that can be realised by using
electronic commerce come from activities that occur
before any of the technology is switched on.
The well-respected Gartner research group suggests 6% to 7% of ecommerce savings can be realised by preparing for ecommerce and developing processes that can be utilised in an online environment, and only 2% to 3% of savings are realised by the actual technology behind the website and related software.
As an example, if your company redesigned its purchasing processes for something as simple as stationery items, it would allow those items to be bought through a single website. This would ensure that the volume discounts negotiated across a number of divisions would be adhered to.
Those “rogue purchases”, where someone purchases items from another supplier, and therefore does not attract the volume discounts, would be all but eliminated. This is where the 6% to 7% savings come in. The rest is just technology executing a transaction – pretty much like a souped up Eftpos machine.
Real benefits?
So we’ve heard all the hype, but just what are the real
benefits of ecommerce? And what are you as business
leaders expected to do to keep up with all of the
changes?
When you consider that it took more than 50 years for the number of radio subscribers to double in size, just 14 years for television, and only five years for mobile phones, it will come as no shock to you that the internet doubles in size every nine months.
In the industry, we often talk about “internet speed”, where the technology and techniques change so quickly that a month in the eworld in terms of advancement and pace would seem like seven normal months in business. Internet years, as they are called, are much like dog years – one “eyear” for every seven normal ones.
I believe online companies that are supported or founded by established “off-line” companies will be the ones that survive. But regardless of who survives, any new ecommerce initiative will be closely scrutinised, and will require very committed backers.
Preparing for the runaway train
So if the new “new economy” is bearing down on us like a
runaway train, what can we do to prepare for it? Do we
have the right training and experience to understand all
the issues of the online world – such as supply chain
management, customer resource management, trading hubs,
broadband, portals?
More importantly, do our successors have the skills to embrace this change and are we training our school leavers and tertiary students in the right subjects? Will there be enough of them to go around? What should we do right now?
Even the current education system is being dragged kicking and screaming into the new economy. I noticed with interest a few days ago that school students are going to be tested for “internet literacy” to ensure that they have an adequate understanding of the internet before they leave school.
One politician was critical of this, and claimed that this would force all teachers and staff at schools to become “eliterate” rather than computer illiterate. I fail to see the problem with this.
It is also interesting to note that some management courses claim to offer ecommerce subjects and degrees, but do not harness today’s ebusiness professionals and practitioners in their delivery.
I would argue that an academic of 20 years standing cannot possibly stay in touch with the happenings in ecommerce in the same way that ecommerce practitioners must.
Why then when I look at the ecommerce subjects being taught at well-respected universities do I see very few lecturers that come from the industry? We need to encourage those working in the industry to give up some of their time to help train students in ecommerce with practical and relevant examples.
Business-smart technologists
We must also ask if we are training enough young people
in technology and business subjects, and attracting
school leavers to start studying the right courses early
enough.
There are many IT&T and ebusiness courses around, and I feel strongly that they must not only teach about the technologies employed but also cover the business issues and train students as “business smart technologists” at a greater rate.
The problem is that we simply cannot train them fast enough. Thankfully, IT skills task forces are addressing the problem. So what will our “eleaders” of the future look like?
A recent survey by the consulting firm AT Kearney addressed this question. They argue that the eleader needs to be:
1. customer obsessed;
2. paranoid;
3. a risk taker;
4. have bandwidth separation anxiety (that is, they
cannot be more than five minutes away from a mobile or
an internet connection);
5. able to admit mistakes;
6. an evangelist; and
7. brutally frank.
That’s an interesting range of traits, I hear you say, and I wonder how many of you here have these sorts of people working for you today. Are they part of your succession plan?
If you do have people with these traits working for you right now, how will you keep them? There is a worldwide shortage of qualified and motivated eleaders and they are being snapped up by companies in the US and being paid in US (read: real) dollars.
As you can see, it’s tough negotiating the eworld.
(Continued, part 2, this issue)