To succeed in e-business, a company`s culture has to be inextricably involved with the Internet as the key business enabler.
"Many companies currently marketing themselves as 'dot com` companies are no such thing," says Rob Lopez of Dimension Data Networking. "This is simply veneer. You only have to scratch just beneath the surface to see that the old business culture remains. And on the systems side, the back office is not fully integrated with the front office, which is critical for operation as a dot com company."
In a true dot com environment, employees, suppliers, partners and customers have immediate access to the online information they need for their particular functions.
"One of our major strategic partners, Cisco Systems, for example, has been described as among the most web-enabled companies in the world," says Lopez. "Three years ago, it took the fairly radical decision to re-engineer the whole company to take advantage of the Internet. Today, any company executive can press a button and close the books at any time of day - and get a totally accurate picture of the business at that point in time."
Cisco now conducts more than 80 percent of its business, or $28m per day, over the Internet and is often held up as the leading example of the new Internet Economy.
"Cisco is a leading dot com company because the entire business is fully automated and integrated," says Lopez. "And the company culture is totally in tune with this new way of doing business.
"All Cisco`s sales and customer service staff have had to buy in to the new culture, which has now become the standard culture throughout the organisation. It`s the only way to operate if a company really wants to get the maximum benefit from the e-business era."
Share
Editorial contacts