| E-business on demand businesses address competitive Darwinism by focusing on differentiating capabilities. They become far more responsive, allowing them to successfully navigate continuous discontinuities and spend less time and money building inflexible business models based upon inevitably wrong predictions. While these corporations can't escape unrelenting financial pressures, they migrate more of their cost structure to variable models, which can adapt quickly to changes in demand, moving away from committed investments. In addition, they develop resilient operations that can withstand a multitude of unpredictable threats. Successful organizations master these four dimensions—becoming focused, responsive, variable, and resilient—and, in doing so, they make e-business on demand their new agenda, accelerating the creation of value for their customers and other stakeholders. Figure 7.4 below explains. Figure 7.4. The responses to the four unrelenting business pressures—an e-business on demand operating environment. 
Charles Schwab—Enabling Information E-Business on Demand | A WORLD CLASS INVESTMENTS COMPANY TWEAKS ITS SYSTEMS TO ALLOW E-BUSINESS ON DEMAND RESPONSES TO CUSTOMER INQUIRIES. |
Charles Schwab, a well-known and respected financial services company and long-time IBM customer, wanted to investigate autonomic and grid technology and what it might mean for its business. It defined an e-business on demand challenge for IBM to solve: How can Charles Schwab's employees provide immediate, real-time help to customers within an IT infrastructure that currently necessitates customer callbacks? Why become an e-business on demand? When customers phone Schwab with questions, they frequently can't get immediate answers, because the application that employees use is too slow in responding: Instead, customers have to wait for a return call. Speeding up the application would increase customer satisfaction. This means more business. How and where did they start? IBM and Charles Schwab's Advanced Technology Group took an existing application that ran on non-IBM systems and grid-enabled it with the Globus Toolkit running Red Hat Linux on IBM eServer xSeries 330 machines. What benefits did they achieve? This solution reduced the processing time on the application from more than four minutes to 15 seconds: a 94 percent improvement. Since this particular application scaled extremely well in an autonomic/grid environment, proving the potential for autonomic/grid-based services in a financial services environment, Schwab hopes to implement the solution sometime soon. The two companies are now looking at ways to expand the grid activities to other financial services organizations. Finnair—Air Carrier Turns to IBM for E-Business on Demand Transformation | AIRLINE SEEKS TO SURVIVE INDUSTRY CONSOLIDATION, AND DOMINANCE BY BIG AIR CARRIERS. |
Finnair, one of the world's oldest operating airlines, wants to be the travel industry's digital champion, estimating that more than half of its passengers will soon be using the Internet for airline services, from making ticket reservations to clearing check-in. To meet this anticipated customer demand, Finnair came to IBM not only to transform its service chain and IT systems, but to create an innovation center for incubating new solutions for the airline industry, such as wireless check-in, e-ticketing via the Internet, and wireless ticket sales. Why become e-business on demand? Finnair had been using IBM products for years. But when it chose to explore a real business transformation, Finnair chose IBM for its broader business value: its depth in research and technology, and long airline industry IT experiences. How and where did they start? IBM is working with Finnair to move to a digital service chain so that every customer contact is becoming more personalized, available as a record, and integrated with related records. This requires integrating its internal business processes, so the effect of variables in one process can be seen across the enterprise as a whole, and the use of integrating middleware, in order for Finnair's different computer systems to work together. By using open standards, Finnair can interact with any company, supplier, and partner. What benefits did they achieve? Moving to the e-business on demand utility model will allow Finnair to scale up or scale down according to demand and to pay only for the computing capacity it uses. Additional benefits Finnair will enjoy from this approach include flexibility to respond dynamically to any kind of variable across its systems or in the marketplace. Improving its competitiveness; moving its cost structure from fixed to variable; reducing IT-related expenses and releasing capital for its core airline business; and reinvesting a significant portion of resulting cost-savings in business transformation will help Finnair realize its vision of being the digital travel industry champion. Metro Group: The Future of Retail Is E-Business on Demand | PROVIDING RETAIL CUSTOMERS THEIR PRODUCT CHOICE AT THE RIGHT TIME AND PLACE, IN AN EVER-INCREASING E-BUSINESS ON DEMAND WORLD. |
Metro Group, a major retail corporation in partnership with IBM, has opened a futuristic supermarket in Germany to test new retail technologies with customers. These technologies bring the promise of increased efficiency and customer responsiveness, key differentiators in the tough retail market. Why become e-business on demand? A major problem for retailers is keeping track of their stock and being able to provide their customers the right product in the right color or size at the right time in the right place. "Shrinkage"—the disappearance of articles by theft, damage, or loss—costs retailers billions every year. Metro Group chose IBM for its radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, which means products can be tracked at any point in the supply chain, eliminating significant inefficiency and shrinkage while better satisfying customer demand. How and where did they start? IBM's business consultants began by redesigning the supermarket's supply chain process, integrating a system that now includes "Smart Shelves" that have the ability to communicate—warning the stock rooms when the razor rack is nearly empty, for example, or triggering promotional advertising on a nearby screen as a customer picks up a shampoo bottle. The RFID gives a complete picture of where each item is in the store, unlike bar codes, which only track by groups of identical items. RFID tags in the shopping carts tell store management how many carts are in the store. If there's an increase, additional checkouts are opened to accommodate the extra volume, bringing an end to delays at the checkout. What benefits did they achieve? -
Reduction in stock carrying costs through better inventory management. -
Fewer sales losses caused by empty shelves. -
Reduced theft, because tags raise alarm at exits unless products are scanned at a checkout. -
More effective staff, because Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) provide real-time information on stock. -
Increased sales through targeted in-store promotion. -
Access to information on customer buying habits, data that can be used to predict demand and automatically fed back through the inventory management systems to better tailor stock to customer needs. | 
