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September 27, 1999

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Tech Companies Want Everything On The Web

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Computer Associates showcased its new customer-service application at its most recent CA World user conference in New Orleans this past July. According to Quinn, the company's system will be very much like retail customer-service systems, where customers can get phone support over the Web through the use of technologies that allow phones to be connected to the network, such as voice over IP.

"The customer needs to be able to come through the Web, then direct calls to the right place simply by clicking on the icon of a phone," Quinn says.

IBM's Ward estimates that, for his company, more than half of all service transactions today are done via the Internet. This year, IBM expects to do about 28 million customer-service transactions over the Web. Ward explains that "over the Web" means these transactions will be pure Web communications with no human intervention. The customers that are served this way are "some of our most satisfied," Ward says. "They're getting answers when they need them."

And, as in its electronic-procurement scenario, the increase in electronic customer service has meant greater cost savings for the company. IBM performed 14 million electronic customer-service transactions in 1998 and saved $300 million; this year the company expects to save $600 million from the 28 million customer-service transactions.

ERP Efforts
Although E-commerce is a huge part of many of these companies' IT plans, others are focusing their efforts elsewhere. EMC Corp., a Hopkinton, Mass., maker of mainframe computer disk memory hardware and software, is planning to implement an Oracle-based global enterprise resource planning system. "We're moving toward integrating all business processes into our ERP environment," says Bob Heise, CIO at EMC. "AS/400s, Unix, and NT systems, management of our legacy environments-these will all be part of this integrated, global ERP system."

With this type of system, Heise says, customers and employees will see a higher degree of efficiency and availability, although he could not provide specific examples.

Although many of the companies in the InformationWeek 500 IT sector are using technology to improve customer or employee satisfaction, a large number are also in the midst of broad efforts to transform their IT organizations to better meet the changing needs of the business.

Companies such as Xerox Corp. and NCR Corp. are beginning this shift by moving what were once regional IT operations into global entities. "We're changing the way we focus, to sell wherever and however customers want to buy," says Pat Cusick, who was named CIO at Xerox in June. But, more important, "We're becoming more of an IT company," she says. "We're transforming from a geographic environment to an industry-aligned company, from a copier company to a digital document solutions provider."

IBM is implementing an even more drastic change. "For a company that's purely Web based, IT and the Web and business processes are all the same," Ward explains. "But for a large company, those three things are different areas-IT is spread across the organization, process is manufacturing and development, and the Web is frequently off in a different group."

Trying to provide a total solution for the customer requires a different approach, he says, so IBM is bringing those three areas together. Web development and IT, for example, are now all part of one team. Even Ward's title, CIO and manager of business transformation, reflects the change in IBM's approach. It's a shift that's likely to occur-if it hasn't already-at many of the companies in an industry accustomed to dramatic change.

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