Business Web Strategy: Design, Alignment, and Application

Virtually, all organisations in developed countries create Web pages to advertise their product / services. Literature indicates that firms rely on Web access for variety of reasons including increasing efficiency, enhancing effectiveness, cost reduction, sharing of managerial know-how, time-to-market reduction, customer satisfaction, improved corporate image and branding policies, and increasing market share (Barua et al., 2000; Bovet & Martha, 2000; Cox & Koelzer, 2004; Evans & Wurster, 2000; Porter, 2001; Ries & Ries, 2002; Wilson, 2002).

Empirical studies indicate high satisfaction of organisations from the investment on Web technologies. A worldwide survey indicates that more than half surveyed organisations (2847 respondents) declare to be satisfied with the outcome of their investments on Web technologies over the past five years; almost three-quarters of the interviewed companies declare to be wanting to continue or increase the investments in Web technologies in the coming years (McKinsey, 2007). A recent survey (Awareness, 2008) shows that 96% of the surveyed organisations are happy with their investment on web technologies. The survey concludes that Web can be used to improve communication and collaboration (91% of surveyed organisations), selection and allocation of professional resources (81%), sharing information (78%) increase brand awareness and customer retention (64%).

Notwithstanding the benefits of investment on Web technologies for organisations well-being, studies highlight a concern among firms that Web may create additional managerial problems and may not actually be the panacea for their existing problems and when an organization has managerial problems it will probably translate the same problems to the virtual space. Outcome of some empirical studies reflect detrimental and adverse outcomes:

AIM OF THE BOOK AND TARGET AUDIENCE

There has been evidence which highlights how investments in technology have often resulted in expensive failures and severe losses; projects started and never finished, results not meeting expectations, incoherence between technology and company strategy or structure, inability to evaluate results and therefore, difficulty to know if the initiative has been or not successful (Fattah, 2002; Minard 2001; Minard 2002; Iacovou and Dexter, 2005; Kappelman at al., 2006). These studies point to the lack of a sound Web strategy and a gap between the firm web strategy and other strategies, including corporate strategy and ICT strategy.

The interaction of Web strategy with other strategies and actors.

Like any other project entailing technology and changes in the way people work within an organisation, the skill of employees, and their competence are critical elements in the planning of a Web Strategy (Internal actors - Figure 1). In addition, the positive interaction or satisfaction of customers (external actors - Figure 1) with the organisation’s Web forms one of the major challenges for the organisation willing to develop a successful Web Strategy.

This book addresses the gap in business web strategy considering positive interaction of external actors as well as skills and competence of internal actors. It aims to present cutting-edge research on the theory, applications and challenges facing the design, development and implementation of the Web Strategy.

This book is mainly oriented to people who, for different reasons, recognize that the Web is a powerful tool for supporting Business Strategy. Managers such as CEOs, General Directors, Plan and Control responsible, IT responsible, will be considered as privileged actors.

In general, the natural users of this book will be not only the ICT vendors, but also those managers, consultants and trainers who must offer innovative and effective answers in this new business field.

Web strategy topic, both in industry and in academies, has grown rapidly over the past decade, and continues to grow. The book provides insights and support for the following groups of people:

BOOK STRUCTURE

The book comprises 18 chapters organised into three sections; design, alignment and applications. The following is a brief description of each section and the chapters included in them.

Section I. Web Strategy: Design

The first section of this book features six chapters that deal with customer value and various trends, patterns and methodologies affecting the design of Web strategy. The first chapter, “Using Patterns for Engineering High-Quality E-Commerce Applications” is authored by Pankaj Kamthan and Hsueh-Ieng Pai, who present a methodology for deploying patterns for improving the quality of e-commerce applications and identifying relevant quality attributes. The authors analyse the role of development processes and the challenges facing optimal use of patterns. They explore the use of patterns during macro- and micro-architecture design of business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce applications.

Web technology has a strong impact on corporate processes and ultimately, requires new ICT skills and new training paths. “Informing Industry via Academic Research in ICT Skill and Capability Development” by Krassie Petrova and B. Dawn, deal with these two aspects. This chapter designs framework representing the dynamics of the ICT supply and demand for graduates with relevant skills and capabilities. The framework facilitates the dialogue between industry and academia aiming to identify issues raised from the lack of alignment between the two and to suggest a pathway for using academic research results to address industry requirements. The framework is supported by the findings of two relevant case studies.

Internet does not only changes processes, but also corporate logic and attitude toward ICT. Within the same scope of Chapter II, Jiri Vorisek and George Feuerlicht, in Chapter III, “The Impact of New Trends in the Delivery and Utilization of Enterprise ICT on Supplier and User Organizations” have identified a number of important trends within the framework of ‘Software as a Service (SaaS)’ model. These trends lead to more effective ICT management of ICT. The authors emphasise that these trends will have dramatic impact on both the suppliers and users of ICT, and will necessitate the re-evaluation of approaches to ICT education.

The logic for Web usage has been changing quickly over the past years. Javier Soriano, David Lizcano, Marcos Reyes, Fernando Alonso, and Genoveva López, in their chapter, entitled, “Enterprise (Web) 2.0: Collaboration and Knowledge Emergence as a Business Web Strategy Enabler” explore Internet’s present and future potential in relation to information sharing, knowledge management, innovation management and the automation of cross-organizational business transactions. They point out how a business Web strategy protects investments in technology that would otherwise have resulted in expensive failures and severe losses. The chapter guides entrepreneurs, managers and IT leaders through the adoption of the latest Internet technologies, such as Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and Global Service Oriented Architecture with a view of setting up an effective business Web strategy.

The fifth chapter is this section, entitled, “Customer Relationship Management (CRM): An In-depth Analysis” by Michael Raisinghani, Abdu Albur, Sue Leferink, Thomas Lyle, and Stephen Proctor, discusses Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as a customer focused business strategy that enhances business processes to proactively manage profitable and long-term customer relationships. The authors argue that understanding the underlying assumptions and theoretical constructs of CRM is an important factor for designing effective Web strategy.

Luigi Geppert in chapter VI, “Different Web Strategies for Different E-Marketplaces”, presents two possible models for electronic marketplaces. Both models show a particular use of Web-based information technology representing meaningful cases for application of well defined Web Strategies.

Section II. Web Strategy: Alignment

The second section of this book contains six chapters focusing on the alignment of Web strategy with other business strategies. The chapters discusses the Web strategy alignment from various perspectives including public presence on the Web (Memmola and Tzannis; Frigerio), analytical perspective (Yen; Hu, Zuo, Chen and Yang), integrating technologies (Schwickert and Ostheimer) or cost measurement and performance management Memmola, Palumbo and Rossini).

Many organizations in the past five years have conducted surveys designed to get a profile of the implementation of Web Services in various subject areas. In the first chapter of this section, Trends of Web Services Adoption - A Synthesis, Vincent Yen develops analyses the results of these surveys. The chapter shows that all sources of surveys indicate Web services are being adopted almost in all medium and large organizations because of realized benefits, and is to become a viable component of the information systems infrastructure. Some of the current issues in Web services adoption and implementation are standards, training and security.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) has recently begun to receive increased interest from practitioners and academics. This type of technology has been widely used in Healthcare Organizations for different purposes. In Chapter VIII, entitled, Web and RFID Technology: New Frontiers In Costing and Process Management For Rehabilitation Medicine, Massimo Memmola, Giovanna Palumbo and Mauro Rossini present the results of a study in which they integrate RFID with Web technology for a test application aimed at defining some specific data on care needs of a disabled person, costs of the main activities performed during his/her rehabilitation process and level of performance that could be reached in order to improve the “disability management” process, from a clinical as well as a managerial perspective.

Mobile handheld devices such as smart cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are used to browse the mobile Internet. However, the small screens of handheld devices and the slow mobile data transmission make the mobile web browsing awkward. In Chapter X, entitled Adaptive Mobile Web Browsing Using Web Mining Technologies, Wen-Chen Hu, Yanjun Zuo, Lei Chen and Chyuan-Huei Thomas Yang present a research that applies Web usage mining technologies to handheld devices. Web usage mining is the application of data mining techniques to the usage logs of large Web data repositories in order to produce results that can be applied to many practical subjects, such as improving Websites/pages. A Web usage mining system must be able to perform five major functions: a) usage data gathering; b) data preparation; c) navigation pattern discovery; d) pattern analysis and visualization; e) pattern applications. This approach improves the readability and download speed of mobile Web pages.

Axel Schwickert and Bernard Ostheimer, in Chapter XI, Integration of Public University Web Sites and Learning Management Systems, addresses the Web’s potentials supporting learning pathways at universities. The World Wide Web is used as an instrument of knowledge transfer and knowledge examination. The chapter addresses the utilisation of Web Content Management Systems (WCMS) for Learning Management Systems (LMS) to transfer and examination of knowledge.

Chiara Frigerio, in her chapter named Innovating Through the Web: the Banking Industry Case, deals with the Web’s strategic role in the banking industry. The chapter provides statistics indicating significant increases in the utilisation of Web technologies during 2001-2007. The chapter describes in details the role of Internet in facilitating services and developing new products for banking industry.

Section III. Web Strategy: Applications

The third section of the book presents six chapters focusing in the Web strategy applications. It contains results from several case studies and empirical research.

In Chapter XIII, entitled, An Action Research Case Study of the Facilitators and Inhibitors of E-Commerce Adoption, Orla Kirwan and Kieran Conboy study the adoption of e-commerce by small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). The authors employ action research methodology and use an established Irish retail business as a case study. The authors demonstrate how the research was undertaken, and discuss the justification, benefits and limitations of using action research. The research concluds that the adoption of e-commerce within the SME sector tends to be slow and fragmented. It also supports the evidence that an SME is more likely to adopt e-commerce when the SME owner has a positive attitude toward IT.

Chapter XIV, Acceptance of the Mobile Internet as Distribution Channel for Paid Content in Germany by Svenja Hagenhoff, Christian Kaspar, Lutz Seidenfaden and Björn Ortelbach present a survey based on 7,178 valid responses which analyses the mobile content usage in Germany. The authors found that respondents who are familiar with mobile radio and handset technology and read specialized printed media on a regular basis, show the highest acceptance of mobile paid contents. The mobile Internet is perceived as a chance for the media industry to generate additional revenues from paid contents. The authors conclude that media companies planning to establish mobile services for content distribution are facing the problem that acceptance of mobile services has not yet been researched thoroughly.

Information quality is critical for a communication portals because there are myriads of information types, including textual, audio, video and other complex information types. Kevin Ho, in his chapter, entitled, Information Quality Satisfaction of Communication Portals: A Study of Central Cyber Government Office (CCGO) of the Hong Kong Government presents a study that examines whether information generated from an in-house developed communication portal of the Hong Kong Government would have higher quality than those portals developed by individual government departments using commercial packages. He conducted a survey-based study to understand how users evaluate the information quality of these communication portals. The case-study presented in the chapter is interesting because; (1) Hong Kong Government has invested millions of US dollars in its implementation; and (2) the number of potential users is huge (over 140,000 users).

Performance assessments of Web projects and IT investments in general,is one of the most debated subjects in literature. Fernando Jose Barbin, Laurindo and Maria Alice Frontini present an interesting methodological approach to the subject, based on the ‘Real Options’ method. The chapter, entitled The Evaluation of IT Investments Through Real Options, underlines how Chief information Officers (CIOs) face prejudice from top management, who are concerned with the real benefits that IT can bring to business. This chapter concludes that the technological uncertainties make it very difficult to estimate the value that can be extracted from the usage of new IT solutions.

Silvia Zilber, in her chapter, Strategic Use of the Internet and Organizational Structure for E-business: “Celta” Case at GM Brazil, presents an interesting study about the introduction of e-business activities by General Motors Brazil, specifically in connection with the launch of the Celta car - an entry-level car designed to be sold on the Internet. The organizational structure implemented for the launching and sales of Celta car warranted the integration between employees on both business and information technology (IT) sides, in the context of GM Brazil’s strategic objective of growing the market share for lower-price cars.

The last chapter of the book, Chapter XVIII, is authored by G. Castellano, A.M. Fanelli, and M.A. Torsello and is entitled On the Use of Soft Computing Techniques for Web Personalization. The authors discuss Web-based applications and emphasise that these applications become increasingly necessary, because of the growing variety and quantity of information available on the Web. In their chapter, the authors emphasise the suitability of hybrid schemes combining different Soft Computing (SC) techniques for the development of effective Web personalization systems. In particular, the authors present a neuro-fuzzy approach for Web personalization that combines the fuzzy and the neural paradigms to derive knowledge from Web usage data and represent it in the comprehensible form of fuzzy rules.