InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
September 13, 1999
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At Toshiba, that's part of the reason for IT people tagging along on sales calls. "Programmers are putting on neckties and going to see the dealers," says VP of strategic planning Lisa Richard. "Get the two together and they will think of things I never would have."
PG&E held a two-day E-business summit last month for 30 of its E-business and IT executives, and the featured outside speaker was a senior VP from a company that would seem to have little to do with the energy business: Charles Schwab & Co. But Schwab, a brokerage company, knows plenty about the transformations caused by E-business. "Many of the best ideas will come from outside your company or outside your industry," says Keast.
Those kinds of multifaceted deals blur the lines between provider and competitor. "Our business has a fuzzy boundary," says Tandy CIO Follit. "In the future, the most successful companies will have more partnerships and relationships like this."
Another fuzzy boundary: where online retailing leaves off and physical-world retailing picks up. And IT finds itself smack in the middle.
Speed, new partners, real-time customer feedback, supplier data shared online--they're all different aspects of a new way of doing business. "And this is a journey that's just beginning," says Graham Allen, manager of E-commerce for the bearings group of steelmaker Timken Corp. "We want to take the 'E' out of E-business. It will be our default way of doing business."
--with additional reporting by Beth Bacheldor and Jeff Sweat
Illustration by Matsu
At its core, E-transformation is about breaking down walls--internal walls between business and IT and between other company functions--but even more radically, walls between what's inside and outside the company. The Internet, of course, offers an unprecedented vehicle to do that for customers, suppliers, and business partners. But it's not just about opening doors with extranets and customer self-service Web sites. It's about a new mind-set--opening the company to new partnerships and new ideas from unexpected sources.
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That holds true for business partnerships as well. Tandy is in the process of transforming itself from a retailer into a provider of technology and telecommunications services. For that reason, Tandy has a joint venture with digital subscriber line company NorthPoint Communications Group Inc. and a reseller and supplier deal with Sprint. Tandy also recently acquired Amerilink Corp., a fiber-optic cable installer.
Tandy's Web site, Radio Shack.com, is integrated with the company's back-end inventory systems, allowing in-store returns of items purchased online and lots of cross-merchandising opportunities between the physical and online channels. "You can't accomplish that without the IT team changing to accommodate it," says Follit. "As we change our business processes, I'm the guy who worries about whether we can really make it happen."
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Photo of Richard by Tom Keller
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