Supercharging the 'E' Drive

In today's challenging economic climate, savvy companies are investing in
the Web to drive down cost, improve employee productivity and integrate more
closely with their customers, suppliers and partners. However, putting systems
and processes together so that they all work, and then getting them to
communicate with suppliers and customers, can be a daunting task.

This undertaking has been made simpler by the advent of Web Services, which
allow businesses to share information stored in their computer applications with
other applications in the company or with those run by customers, suppliers and
partners. By connecting these processes online, companies can significantly
increase the efficiency-and thus lower the cost-of running their enterprise.
When companies began adopting Web Services technologies a few years ago, they
were focused mostly on access: putting information on the Web, enabling some
e-commerce, and so on. Since then, Web Services have grown to represent much
more than that, especially to enterprises wrestling with legacy integration
issues.

It's no secret that there are many processes that keep a business running.
Customer data is housed in databases; accounting applications handle billing and
purchasing; phone calls and faxes are often necessary to handle interactions
with business partners or different parts of large organisations. It's these
myriad functions that cause headaches for IT departments around the world. IT
staff spend so much time making all the underlying business communication
plumbing work, that they have fewer resources to spend on the parts of
infrastructure that make the business run more efficiently.

Another problem is that, today, most processes are still silos-dedicated to
the departments themselves. The goal of Web Services is to connect all these
processes online and increase the amount of automation in businesses. Creating
this kind of on-demand, integrated infrastructure is an enormous challenge-as
well as a huge opportunity.

Software that offers the flexibility to modify and re-organise business
processes on the fly is critical for achieving these goals. Another key to
success is adopting open, non-proprietary computing standards such as Linux, so
that businesses can connect easily and flexibly with one another.

If anything has been accurately proved, it is that doing business on the Web
must translate into real value: better service for customers, better
communication between employees and partners and, most of all, better return on
investment. Once companies grasp this, managers will see their business as a set
of integrated processes, using Web services to connect operations from initial
customer demand through internal and supply-chain operations to order
fulfillment.

Defining e-strategy

During the dot-com era, most organizations plunged into e-business emulating
their competitors or thinking that by introducing some form of portal or
e-commerce solution they will gain a competitive edge. What they have discovered
is that e-business still has to make sense as a business. A "neat"
website or "cool" collaboration environment is not going to be the
main source of competitive advantage. Any e-business initiative has to be tied
to the overall business strategy of the organization and has to be driven by
distinct set of objectives and measurement criteria.

Step 1: define your e-strategy

Your e-business strategy will be a subset of your overall business strategy.
This strategy should be leading to a set of well-defined initiatives each with
its own objectives and desired outputs. The initiatives should be such that you
are able to define metrics of success for each and monitor its health on an
ongoing basis.

Step 2: prioritize

Chances are that you will end up with multiple competing initiatives, each
with its set of proponents. Given the limited resources, these initiatives would
need to be prioritized. Some metrics for prioritization could include factors
like business impact, business urgency, technical complexity, effort involved,
change involved, and organizational readiness. Picking the ones that should be
embarked upon should be a collaborative discussion between business and IT
leaders in the organization.

Step 3: define "success"

Any e-business initiative should have a set of "measurement
criteria" that will define success. Is the aim to drive down cost? Is it to
improve productivity? Is it to allow your customers access to up-to-date
information? The metrics that you define to monitor the health of your
initiative will be tied to your overall objectives.

Step 4: define the organization behind the initiative

Any e-business initiative should involve representation from business and
IT, working as a team, to reach the overall goals. There should be a clear
governance structure that is able to look across the different initiatives,
monitor their health, resolve conflicts, and provide the requisite funding and
resources. For a sample organization structure see the chart.

Step 5: Implement a solution

E-business initiatives tend to be very conducive towards an iterative
implementation model. Once a broad set of business requirements have been
understood, an architecture definition phase may be undertaken to define the
base technologies and platform. This is also a good time to decide between an
out-of-the-box product-based solution or custom development based on core
technologies. The other aspect to keep in mind is the user experience. Many of
the end users may not have had prior training on using web-based applications;
hence, usability of the application becomes one of the key success criteria.
With an architecture and user experience model in place, the application is
further evolved through an iterative process of detailed business requirements,
technical design and implementation.

Step 6: monitor, support and enhance

A continuous process of monitoring the key metrics, making changes as per
the business needs and day-to-day maintenance, is needed to keep the initiative
going.

E-business still has to make business sense and should be judged by the same
set of metrics and RoI calculations that any other initiative in an organization
is measured by. Technology will keep on evolving and each organization should
decide its own route depending on the perceived benefits and the maturity of the
technology.

With contributions from editorial advisors -R Dhamodaran,
vice-president and country executive, Software Group and Developer Relations,
IBM India, and Kamran Ozair, senior vice-president and CTO, IT Services,
MindTree Consulting