Chapter 5: Getting Help with Your E-Business Plan

There is help available in various forms to help you assess your current situation, define and prioritize e-business projects aligned with business goals, develop detailed implementation plans, and implement those plans. In this chapter, we will look at just a few example places you can turn for help.

IBM Global Services

Efficiently navigating the e-business adoption path can be a difficult task—especially in more complex environments. That is why the IBM Global Services division is the fastest-growing part of the company. Global Services is the consulting arm of IBM, consisting of about 165,000 employees in 160 countries actively helping businesses plan and implement e-business projects. Global Services has worked with customers of almost every size in almost every industry as they've moved through the stages of e-business—over 30,000 e-business engagements so far. No other e-business consulting firm has such a broad mass of engagements. It's worth noting here that in October 2002, IBM purchased PricewaterhouseCoopers—a major business consultancy—and rolled it into IBM Global Services as its Business Consulting Services (BCS) group.