InformationWeek

What do these customers have in common? They all have been given a dramatically different "customer experience" as a result of companies that have rethought the nature of the business that they're in. Perhaps visionary, innovative companies have always done that. But the Internet and E-business make such corporate soul-searching an imperative in industries across the board.

"It's not all about going dot-com," says Yobie Benjamin, chief of global strategy at Ernst & Young. "We force executives to try to rethink their core competencies and core assets--and then how to re-leverage them in this new E-business environment. Some companies have an enormously rich distribution system or great customer database. Those are assets you can expand into very different businesses."

So operators of Land Rover dealerships, such as the one in Darien, seeing the traditional haggle-over-price game transformed by Web-savvy customers who already know the dealer invoice price, built a thrill-ride test course to help them sell an experience.

Similarly, TXU--formerly Texas Utilities Corp.--knows that being just a utility company, particularly under deregulation, is a vastly different business than it was even five years ago. So now it sells telecommunications service along with electricity to many of its 3.1 million customers. And it's ramping up to offer online bill payment and high-speed digital subscriber line Internet access to consumers and services such as accounting and purchasing applications to small businesses. "The customer connection is where the value is," says Herb Zureich, president of TXU's communications business. "We ask ourselves, 'what else can we leverage using that connection?' And the answer is services that are mostly information-and technology-driven."

Few companies would seem to be as physically asset-driven as APL, with its 76 container ships crisscrossing the globe to ports where its container-loading facilities tower like science-fiction fantasies. But the transportation giant has come to realize that it's really in the information business.

"The ships and trains can only go so fast," says CIO Don Liedtke. "Our competitive advantage is the information we provide, and that has caused us to rethink our systems and deployments. We look at three things: What the customers absolutely need to know; what they want to know, if possible; and timing--how fast can we get it to them."

For years, APL has provided information in the form of electronic data interchange documents, such as shipping manifests and bills of lading, as part of its overall service. What's different today is that information and customer service are fast becoming the business--and APL is sounding more and more like a business-to-consumer company.

"We've come a long way from Henry Ford's 'you can have any color as long as it's black,' " says Liedtke. "In our business, the equivalent would be standard track-and-trace data, delivered overnight from batch systems. Now we're in a world of mass customization. We want to offer a lot more customized and personalized options, like shipment analysis and performance data, so the customers can do better supply-chain planning in their companies."

Making such data available from the customer's Web browser is just the beginning. APL is about to embark on a three-year transition from its private, mostly frame-relay network, APLNet, to an Internet backbone, working with telecom partners AT&T, Infonet, MCI WorldCom, Singapore Telecom, and Sprint. But the company knows its customers aren't always at their desks, so it also has major initiatives under way to deliver shipment-tracking information to cell phones, radio-frequency devices, and other IP-based appliances. Some U.S. customers already access APL's QuickTrace feature from the Palm VII. "It's a little hard to use a mouse in a warehouse," says Liedtke.

APL's goals illustrate an Internet-age business concept that John Patrick, IBM VP of Internet technology, calls "providing ease of life." At first blush it sounds like a business-to-consumer concept, but companies like APL are showing that it's just as important, if not more so, in business-to-business commerce. "Delivering a quality product or service faster and cheaper is not enough anymore," Patrick says. "You have to ask how you can make life easier for the other guy. Initiatives like vendor-managed inventory are a start. But everyone is short on time."

continued...page 2, 3

Read sidebar story, "Praxair Builds MetFabCity Around Customers."