InformationWeek

September 22, 1997

E-Commerce: All Talk?

Study shows interest but much less action

here's a lot more talk than action about Internet commerce by business executives, says a survey released last week by Diamond Technology Partners, an IT and business consulting firm in Chicago.

Diamond surveyed 400 business and IT executives in medium-sized and large companies and found that while a majority of executives believe Net commerce is important and strategic, a significant number have not even taken the basic technology steps to implement an E-commerce strategy. For example, of the 61% who said they plan to launch major Net-commerce initiatives by mid-1998, 25% said they do not yet have a corporate Web site.

"A lot of these executives are being intellectual dilettantes about Internet commerce," says Paul Carroll, a Diamond partner and editor of the survey. "They believe it's a great idea, but it can be painful for companies to implement a lot of these changes. And even if an individual 'gets it,' teams of executives from different functions have a harder time moving."

The survey polled executives, mostly VPs or higher, at 400 U.S. companies. In all, 22% were IT executives; the rest were mainly in marketing or sales, finance, administration or planning, advertising or communications, and personnel.

Carroll says many of the executives want to be "fast followers"-letting a competitor suffer the technical problems and start-up costs of bleeding-edge technology implementations, then jumping in when a new technology or application is already battle-tested. "They'll wait until they feel the direct pain from a competitor, and then it's too late," says Carroll. "They are sitting ducks for companies that can do something aggressive."

Yet the survey results reflect legitimate concerns about the viability of Net commerce, say some IT executives. "I would still consider firms doing large-scale E-commerce to be pioneers," says Ross Holman, CIO of PageNet, a paging services provider in Dallas. "We don't want to go nuts doing it for Web sales of $12 a month. The market you're going for may not be conducive to E-commerce."

In another contradiction between words and deeds, 53% of the executives agreed that "strong brand identity is more critical than ever"- but only 27% said they were using their Web site or Web-based advertising to further their brand image.

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