The very first task to be accomplished as a Web manager is the creation of a plan. This plan must take into account the long-term goals and vision of the company. Then a strategic business plan can be based on these goals. As in Marketing, a Web Manager must perform a SWOTT analysis for their company. This analysis consists of finding out the company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats and Trends. During this phase of the Web Management plan the competitive landscape should be examined thoroughly as well as the creation of trends analysis reports derived from the company’s Business Intelligence software and its Website analytics reports.
A brief company description should be laid out for examination before describing the company’s areas of interest and major goals. The strengths might consist of competitive advantages that the enterprise holds such as dominant software, increased market share, increased industry knowledge, advanced machinery, better leveraged buying power, deeper consumer or industry data, or heightened growth potential due to the industry’s business climate. Weaknesses to consider are not growing fast enough or growing too fast. It is hard to imagine growing too fast, but this phenomenon happens more often than one might think, and can lead to damaging results. When a company is growing too fast for its business model, it can overextend its finances to keep up. This could cause a company to be slow to react when challenged with environmental issues. Smaller companies could make faster changes and leave the company in question unable to make adjustments.
Hopefully one would find that a company has many opportunities on its horizon. Being a customer-centric organization is an opportunity. Being first movers in industry, machinery, business philosophies or technologies can bring significant competitive advantages. If a company has systems in place to capture end user trends and information, then it has a chance to grow its market share. In fact, a company that rushes to manage its knowledge assets will partake in increased business intelligence; and business intelligence is the tool that talented business professionals and decision-makers need.
A threat to be weary of is competition that is more focused than the company in question. Niche players in production practices, product deliverables, industries or technologies can illustrate their advantages readily. These companies, although not focused on business intelligence or bridging existing business units, are focusing their energies on technology enhancements that are threatening to leapfrog the company at hand. This scenario risks these companies eating away at said business’ critical client base.
The SWOTT analysis must also consist of a problem/resolution statement. A primary problem, either with the company or within the industry, must be highlighted and a statement presenting the opportunity for the company in question must be presented. This is followed by a conclusion in which the Web Manager wraps up for the decision-makers and tells them what they are doing right, what they are doing wrong, what areas they stand to gain the most, and what is coming down the pike in terms of industry trends.
The next goal is to create value to the customer. We will discuss this next time.
Copyright | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
The next goal is to create value to the customer. We will discuss this next time.
Copyright | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
The blog for e-marketing and e-business professionals
Copyright | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
I'd like you to remember back to the previous post when I stated that the true purpose of e-business is to disseminate the enterprise’s business intelligence electronically to managers and non-managers in order to create efficiencies and more accurate business decisions through better communications.
Well... This is accomplished through developing Business Intelligence.
Marketing, Customer Support, Sales/Promotion, and Product Delivery are all recipients of COMMUNICATION. That is because they all share from a centralized knowledge base known as Business Intelligence, or BI. BI is basically the integration of two other databases, Customer Data Integration (CDI) and Knowledge Management (KM). In simple terms, CDI is the 360 degree view of your customers. It takes into account:
- Who they are – Customer, Company, Market, Sub-Market
- Where they are – Location
- What they do – Job title, Business function
- What they buy – Products, Services, Quantities
- When they buy – Frequency, Date of last purchase
- Why they buy – Application, Need, Hot button interests
- How they buy – Fax, Phone, E-mail, E-commerce
- How much they buy – Broken down into months, years and life of customer
- How they heard about you – New business as well as new sales with existing customers
- This gives you profitability per enterprise as well as per opportunity – allowing you to track ROI for marketing and sales campaigns more efficiently
- What issues has the customer had and what was the resolution
All of this information needs to be gathered, stored, brought together and disseminated in an organized way. All of the customer touch points such as the Web, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, and Shipping, must all converge their data in a reservoir of information known as Customer Resource Management (CRM) software. Then, all of the individual customer monetary information must be stored in a back-office accounting software known as Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP. Only when these two systems are converged can a company have its CDI.
In the next post we'll discuss what it means and what it all entails to have a Web presence.
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Knowledge Management, or KM, is the storing of all the organization’s soft data such as training manuals and best practices, expert knowledge, committee findings and disaster recovery plans. This data, while holding little physical value, holds tremendous value to the organization because this knowledge asset is slow to acquire and quick to be lost if it is not stored in a knowledge management database. This database can be stored on the company’s internal servers or computer system, or it can be manipulated into smart design functions that allow it to be placed on the company’s extranet site for use by trusted business partners with their own password to the secure site.
To make it clear:
Customer Relationship Management + Enterprise Resource Planning = Customer Data Integration
and
Customer Data Integration + Knowledge Management = Business Intelligence
To make it clear:
Customer Relationship Management + Enterprise Resource Planning = Customer Data Integration
and
Customer Data Integration + Knowledge Management = Business Intelligence
So there it is: the e-business purpose. Is it what you thought it would look like? For most reading this, the answer is no. This is because most people are under the impression that e-business and e-commerce are one in the same; wherein reality, e-commerce, or an organization’s Web presence, is only a small part of the larger e-business structure.
In the next post we'll discuss what it means and what it all entails to have a Web presence.
Copyright | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
The blog for e-marketing and e-business professionals
Copyright | emarketingprofs | All Rights Reserved
An important point, maybe THE most important point of creating a successful e-business is that everyone within the organization must be on the same page when it comes to the company’s vision, goals and plan of action. The problem is that most corporate heads who think their employees are all on the same page are grossly mistaken. Sure, they know the company’s mission statement, and they may even know the general direction that the company wants to go; but they don’t know squat about what it takes to get there in a technology-driven environment. What does this mean?
In fact, anyone in the organization that is involved with the creation of an e-business solution must first understand the potential implications for the business as a whole, including all of the separate business units. After all, the true purpose of e-business is to disseminate the enterprise’s business intelligence electronically to managers and non-managers in order to create efficiencies and more accurate business decisions through better communications. Marketing, Customer Support, Sales, Promotions, and Product Delivery will all share from the same intelligence structure in a well-balanced e-business system.
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The blog for e-marketing and e-business professionals
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