These are fundamental questions that ABC must be able to answer in order to gage the effectiveness of its campaigns. It must know its customers’ ‘hot buttons’ in order to offer problem-solving solutions and advertise these solutions-based services to future customers. ABC could also look towards web analytical software to refine its marketing efforts and to help it determine future trends. The key to success is to not just gather and segment data but to use it to better understand customers. Once potential customers can be contacted and converted into true customers the next challenge is to ask the critical questions that will ultimately lead to a successful implementation of a company-wide e-business program.

Let us now examine the critical strategic questions that ABC Company must ask and answer to successfully implement its e-business operations. The focus will be on three main objectives: Data collection, joining information and improving profitability. Each one of these objectives will require a number of answers to a number of questions.   However, all of the answers shall be used for one purpose: to provide the management of ABC with the tools they need to assess their distant partners, or customers, and their direct partners, or distributors and suppliers.  These tools consist of INFORMATION.

Branding and Positioning

Pay-per-click advertisements on major search engines, direct mail and e-mail campaigns, trade journal advertisements, or e-newsletters to customers and targeted potential customers would be a way for ABC to create a powerful brand awareness campaign, while positioning itself in key areas where potential customers are most likely to find it and become a qualified lead. Next, ABC must look at its internal realties. That is to say, it must ask itself key fundamental questions regarding the way it does business internally and what connections it must make on the outside to secure competitive advantages in the future.

Internal Realities

ABC must answer many questions about its internal realities. It must answer how it plans to integrate Internet leads into its CRM program. It must also answer how it plans on tracking these leads into profits once they are entered into the back-office accounting system. Some companies combine the two systems into what is known as an ERP or enterprise resource planning system. Some companies take it a step further and add trends analysis information and other information into one central database called a knowledge management system.

Sizing Up the Competition

ABC must answer what it means to be a customer-focused company. It must answer questions regarding product pricing, placement, inventory, distribution, competition analysis and ethical concerns such as security and privacy issues. One point to keep in mind when studying the competition is to pay close attention to how the competitor structures its products and services while analyzing the following areas of the competition:

• Technical
• Sales
• Distribution
• Manufacturing
• Marketing
• Financial
• Legal

This information should be used to plan for the future with ones' competition in mind. Relationship analysis effectively drives more intelligence into strategic decision making, which will give one’s company a competitive edge. Understanding how one’s competitors relate to and work with other organizations provides a more accurate picture of one’s competitive landscape. Finally, ABC needs to measure the effectiveness of its efforts and answer whether or not it accomplished its strategic goals.