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January 31, 2000

E-Business Makes General Electric A Different Company

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ome companies have given E-enabling business processes the highest priority. At General Electric Corp., chairman Jack Welch's 100% E-Business commitment has yielded 1,000 employees dedicated full-time to moving all of GE's business processes online. "By the middle of this year, people will look at this company and say it's a very different company than it was five years ago," says senior VP and CIO Gary Reiner.

GE's E-business initiative is four-pronged: the sell side (customers), the buy side (suppliers), the investment business, and internal processes. One of the best sell-side examples is Polymerland, a subsidiary of GE Plastics in Huntersville, N.C., that sells raw plastics to plastic-products manufacturers.

Photo by Milton Morris When Polymerland.com launched its pilot in 1997 as a secure Web site for customers to buy products online, the company sold less than $10,000 worth of plastics per week and had fewer than 10 regular customers. A year ago, the site still had fewer than 50 regular customers and sold less than $50,000 online per week. By year's end, Polymerland.com had online sales of $100 million, or about 13% of total 1999 revenue. The site now has about 900 customers and supports sales of about $1.5 million per day. Hank Harrell, the unit's E-commerce transaction leader, expects that by the end of this year, about 60% to 70% of Polymerland's total sales will be online.

Meanwhile, Polymerland's salespeople can watch buying patterns to see if business from a specific customer is slacking off and then try to determine why. "The Internet is a great disseminator of information, but humans create services," says Harrell. Instead of processing sales transactions, Harrell says, salespeople can be "more proactive in predicting business and minimizing lost business." GE is learning one of the hard lessons of E-business: the more services and convenience you provide for customers online, the more they seem to want. CIO Reiner says GE's aim is "to stay ahead by satisfying customers faster and better" than its competitors.

Return to main story, "Putting The "E" Back In E-Business."

Photo by Milton Morris

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