E-VENTURES: Managing IT-focused Businsses

Primary source of information: “The Asian Manager’s Handbook of E-Commerce”, Rajesh Chackrabarti and Vikas Kardile; “The E-Myth Contractor”, Michael E. Gerber; and “IndiaSoft” Conference Materials

"The key to success in e-venture is not technology, but value addition and customer satisfaction. Technology should serve, not rule."

Strategic Framework for Growth

Know the global market and trends
- Where is the need?
- What is the solution?
- What is the cost?
Leapfrog – partner with enabling technologies
- Professional services
- Value-added products / services
Dig inside business value chain
- Identify needs
- Develop innovative solutions

Invest in training and education
- Provide training
- Encourage self-learning
- Coach

Challenges for the IT Leader

Knowledge
Cost management
Quality management
Value delivery
State-of-the-art IT infrastructure
Reliable legal procedures and policies
Product / process / service innovation
Ability to work with competition
Continuous improvement

Tips for Building a "Winner" Website

The central objective: to capture the attention of the viewer, exceed his expectations, leave a positive impact in his mind and turn him into a repeat visitor.
Simplicity: Your site should be easy to read and not messy.
Leanness: Avoid irrelevant materials at all cost. Convey your core message and avoid any distractions.
Shortness: Avoid too much text in your pages. A picture can be better than pages of words.
Speed: Downloading time is crucial. If your web page takes to long to load, you are more likely to lose a large number of potential visitors.
Consistency: The different web pages is your site should have a consistent layout; a common design or a motif so that the site as a whole leaves a unified impression in the mind of the visitor.
Ease of navigation: Be sure to have a site map and a search engine.
Updating: Update your content regularly.
Privacy: Promise – and deliver! - privacy to your visitors about their names or e-mail addresses, etc.
Security: Provide information about the security and encryption procedures followed by your site, particularly if you transact and accept payments over the site.
Contact information: Provide contact information clearly on the site.

Discover much more!

Business Model

New Business Models

Enterprise-wide Business Process Management (EBPM)

8 Essential Principles of Enterprise-wide Business Process Management (EBPM)

Process Thinking

Project Management

4 Phases of IT/Business Alignment

Ten3 Mini-Courses

Smart Business Architect (150 slides) ► Demo

Synergizing Value Chain (200 slides)

Before You Begin: Questions to Answer

Why do you want to go online?
What business do you want to be in?
How will your online business add value to your customers?

The Tao of Value Innovation

How should you align your offline and online business?

e-Venture Opportunity: Paradigm Shift

Old Model
- IT development
- IT installation
- IT maintenance
- IT enhancement
New Model
- Solution development
- IT Integration Services
- Bridging the “business-IT divide”
- Rethinking the value chain and enterprise business process management (EBPM)
- IT enhanced processes
- Remote services

Smart Business Architect

Start with an Agreed-upon Plan

If you decided to integrate e-business into your entire enterprise, start with a roadmap – an agreed-upon plan with mutually acknowledged mileposts for tracking achievement of success. It would allow you to grow faster, to be more productive, and more satisfied with the progress toward becoming an e-business.

Basic Guidelines

Adding Value to the Customer: Your e-venture will be successful only if it really adds value to the customer. Your unique selling proposition (USP) and value proposition has to clear, compelling and easily understood by the customer. Whatever technology features you use, if it doesn’t provide meaningful benefits to the customer, all the show and tech-effects will end in nothing.

Deliver value-added online services: Delivering online services is not a benefit in itself unless it clearly improves upon the traditional offline offering.
Use the power of Internet Technology – easy and fast access to information, building communities to cross-pollinate ideas, capability to process a large quantity of information, or providing tools for effective decision-making - to enhance your product’s value online.
Get market feedback: Conduct careful opinion surveys amongst your current customers to find out how you can serve them better by adopting online methods. Make suggestions to the customers in such surveys as they may not always come up with the ideas themselves. Your e-initiative has to be customer-centric and not based on just some exciting ideas. Many a seemingly great ideas has perished for the lack entrepreneur’s execution skills and lack of takers in the marketplace.

Project Management: Two Approaches

Discover much more in the FULL VERSION of e-Coach

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Major Issues Involved in Setting Up and Running an e-Venture...

Developing a Business Plan for e-Venture...

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