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A happy medium Jurriaan Pröpper of Magnus Management
Consultants identifies the critical success factors in e-business. |
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E-business is starting to mature. The Wild West mentality of the past few years, where every idea was cherished as a gold nugget as long as it related to the internet, has given way to a sense of reality. After all, even the brightest initiatives need eventually to generate enough income to cover costs and recoup investments. Thanks to the characteristics of e-business, though, the greatest prospect of success belongs neither to today’s major, established corporations nor to the much-vaunted start-ups. As e-business development stands, the best measure of any new initiative’s success is how much market share it can command. As soon as a new business site or community is announced, it’s child’s play for the competition to take the idea and run. The answer is to keep time-to-market as short as possible and, after the launch, to mobilise all forces in a rush to capture a substantial share of the market. That’s only possible if the e-business initiative is supported by an organisation with high enough scores in the following five dimensions of success. And the signs are that medium-sized niche market leaders are in the best position. 1. Strength. Market players – customers, suppliers or both – need pressing and cogent reasons to engage with new e-business initiatives. So businesses with large, established customer bases are quicker to achieve critical market share than those competitors who have to coax new customers from ground zero. A strong and familiar brand is also useful in this regard. |
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International Consultants' Guide March
2001 |
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E-Business