Suspended E-nimation?

trix_e asks: "I am Director of E-business at a medium-sized traditional manufacturing company (US$3B. annual revenue), my team and I are responsible for many of our e-commerce initiatives (selling on the web, CRM, etc.). My company, like most others, still has the PR wheels rolling full steam ahead, claiming undying allegiance to the concept of 'e-ing', e-business, e-commerce, e-process, e-verything... However I don't feel the same internal fervor for this as I did a year ago. I wanted to ask all of the good Slashdot folks what they were seeing from the inside of their respective organizations. more to the personal point, do you feel that as companies continue to belt-tighten, will groups like mine be the first to go (with no regard to actual value, but instead because we're viewed as non-essential)?"

"Is there still massive internal commitment to e-ing everything, or has the combination of the 'Dot-bomb' era, the down economy, and the notion among some circles that this was all just another fad like Re-engineering & TQM, taken the bloom off the rose?"

Use What Works

[eric2hill]

e-everything is simply a buzzword that has been passed over due to many of the failed attempts at a better way. Online commerce is, however, not "done for". Look at some of the most popular procurement sites: CDW, Insight, Buy.com. They are making money. They are simple to use and provide value to the company in many ways. For instance, with CDW, I have an account manager that I place my orders through, but I do all my shopping on their online site. The online site doesn't see any money from me, but it sure does drive business.

Sit back in your ez-chair and look at the big picture. How does a customer benefit from e-whatever? If you can't come up with any obvious answers, then e-something isn't for you. If you know that your customer is happier with online portions of your business, then your company wins. It's not about money, it's about customer satisfaction. Do what works, and scrap what doesn't quickly.

Belt-tightening Victim

[ers81239]

Since I starting web development 5 years ago, I have been on the receiving end of the layoffs that happen when a company hits hard times.

Its my experience that upper management doesn't really understand what you do so when they need to pinch a penny, you are the first to go. I'm at my 5 company in as many years, and they have just announced a 5% pay cut for all full-time employees. I'm sure that it won't be long before I'll be on Monster again.

I think that the problem is worsened by middle managers who put IT resources into "cool" pet projects instead of delivering money-making or money-saving solutions.

Next few quarters are not looking good.

[Kefaa]

I do not want to sound bleak but 9/11 was damaging to many businesses that depended on air transport, shipping, or travel. People are worried about the situation and their jobs. Add to that the layoffs of the past three months and that is impacting business projections.

I am seeing a number of companies that are involved in arbitrary "slash and burn" in order to turn numbers around for the next few quarters. Internal organizations must either bring in revenue or cost savings which can be quantified. ROIs over 9 months are being rejected as too long given the current market.

I do not know what your organization looks like, but if you cannot show real dollars as revenue or savings, consider your group "at risk." and act accordingly. I never recommend acting out of fear, however much like a fire extinguisher is precautionary you may want to look around at what options are available to you to generate quantifiable savings or revenue.

Sounds like a great time to get together the entire team for a brainstorming session.

What happened...

[cmowire]

What happened was that everybody signed up to put an e- before everything. Some of it made sense, some of it didn't.

For example, it's a pretty good bet that if you have a catalog, having a website will be helpful. The computer catalog places are still seeing benefit from their sites, which is why they are still up.

What you will most likely see is people dropping the e- prefix and the .com suffix from things. Same as they are not buying those funky mesh chairs anymore, making people wear nicer clothes, cutting back the absurd benefits, etc. Nobody wants to be associated with the possibility of becomming the next dot-bomb, e-bomb, or other such thing.

And this is the best way to keep your job and make smart decisions. If you are selling people only on the e- part of the name, that's bad. If you have a business plan for the feature that centers around things like "Making this paper-driven process accessible online so that you can kick back clearly wrong submissions without spending a real person's time, save time, not have to deal with so much paper, etc." and have an attached cost-benefit plan, then you are doing real business that leaverages computers.
And making things electronic will still be useful. If they can replace a staff of 100 low-level employees with an electronic system that requires a pair of servers and part of somebody's time to maintain it, that's saving money.

But putting a system that works fine as a paper-driven process, especially if your users are uneducated and computer-phobic, is a bad idea. Switching all of your databases over to using XML for no apparent reason other than hype is a bad idea. Changing the way a system works without a good appreciation for why it works that way is a bad idea. And that's the e-stuff that is bombing.

My experience...

[larien]

Where I work, there's some movement towards e-business; in fact, one of my current projects is the setup of a development server for eBusiness using Websphere Application Server under AIX (WAS is an IBM product, FWIW).

Early next year, I expect another project to set up acceptance and live environments; that project should have a hardware budget well into 6 figures (UK pounds), so there's certainly still some money going towards it.

As for globally, we have 3 "centres of excellence" (internal term; basically, the idea is that all the servers and expertise is concentrated in 3 sites; one in Europe, one in America and on in Asia); we're not one, but we're doing things the other centres aren't due to the way the business operates, so we're setting up another centre :)

Consider your objectives

[lizrd]

If you're going to implement an e-cyber-inter-i-.com project just for the sake of doing it, it's probably a bad idea. Think about the services your company provides (beyond the obvious making and shipping of product) and think about how you can use the internet to make them better. Can you automate some of your technical support? Can you provide more up to date catalog information online than you can in print? Can you provide tools to help your salesmen and customers find eachother? How can you use the internet to make it easier for your customers do business with you than with your competitors? If a project is going to increase sales or repeat customers it's probably a good idea and is worth considering. If all it's going to do is add another useless link to your website it probably ain't worth much.