Chapter 5: The Digitally Connected Renaissance

Overview

The eBusiness revolution, heralded by the ever-growing suite of communications technologies, has failed to deliver the quantum change in business operations. This significant shortfall in the delivery of perceived benefits is because of the overhyping of capabilities, a lack of action in addressing business transformation and a lack of a clear value proposition in which the technology would act as an enabler. The overestimation of capabilities, contained in the marketing hype generated by the technology companies and the media, failed to consider the rate at which companies can absorb the organization and procedural changes needed to accommodate the new capabilities that technology presented. Although the technology presented new opportunities for organizations to rethink themselves, the rate at which businesses redefined their internal and external business processes was much slower than the expectations of the customers. In most cases, it was because the investment required to redesign processes was not factored into the timely delivery of benefits. Internet technologies enable an organization to reduce business process latency by reconfiguring not only the processes themselves but the intervals between the process steps. The Internet also enables new distribution capabilities and reinforces communications with customers and suppliers.

One thing is clear, however: the new business models brought forth by the Internet gold rush demonstrated that all models, regardless of their inventiveness, must have a measurable value proposition and a sustainable return on investment. Many of the new Internet-based business models were based on future savings or the acquisition of new customers, not on sustainable earnings.

However, organizations which dismiss the potential long-term impact of the Internet on global business must rethink their position. The Internet demonstrated the need for international and domestic businesses to increase the level and frequency of information transfer in the execution of business operations. Customers’ lifestyles are changing; this fact requires business to operate at a time which is convenient to the customer. Technology is the key in accommodating this new dimension of order fulfilment and customer expectations and, as we shall see, the continued redefinition of social behaviours will increasingly influence the construction of a business’s value proposition.