Digitalwall: Corporate Website a Handful (1) Accountability Where?

Pinpoint positioning and air-tight accountability are what make a Corporate website tick.

ECommerce has taken deep roots in Taiwan, where shopping online is increasingly a daily activity for many. Many business proprietors have abandoned the thinking that Internet is unprofitable. Instead, they have started to encourage employee participation in this market.

However, many of these business owners have but a vague conviction that "this must be done" but are at a loss as to how to do it, what it is that they want to achieve, who to entrust this responsibility with, and how to ensure accountability.

A while ago, some famous Taiwanese car vendor approached me with a request for counseling as its management has given specific orders to push for Internet sales.One thing led to another, and I ended up paying that company a visit, during which I talked with the department in charge of this assignment.

As the meeting proceeded, I realized that task force was busy evaluating how the online sales system should be built and what kind of eCommerce system should be purchased. But what the little get-together left me with was the question of whether car as a product was suited for sales on the Internet or not.

Among products mostly commonly marketed through the Internet right now are 3C (computer, communications, consumer electronics) products, cosmetics, and tour packages. One thing they have in common is that they all come in at tag prices of around one to several hundred(s) of US dollars and that's it.

That is, for such luxury items like cars, which can easily cost up to tens of thousands of US dollars, buyers are barred from having them paid for via credit card service, not to mention the most popular payment-on-delivery mechanism that are built upon the network of convenience stores. Not to make the situation any better, cars are too expensive for potential buyers to set one's heart on particular car without seeing the car for himself, listening to the sales staff lie about it, or maybe take it for a spin a few blocks. A few webpages, how informative they may be, simply don't suffice.

For a company that does not plan on doing E-sales, full-functional eCommerce system won't be necessary. That is, the task force's indecision as to what kind of eCommerce system to buy is not due to lack of experience on their part but due to the absence of Corporate website's strategy and positioning , which prevents any staff, however capable, from going ahead with the evaluation and the ultimate purchase.

Once the procrastination over system purchase drags on and the presumed lack of experience take its toll, the human resource department will start to nurse the idea of hiring someone more experienced in eCommerce from outside to handle the entire initiative.

Hearing that, my guts told me that that would be the overture to a major corporate disaster as, I must point out, one still needs a set of criteria to assess performance of this guy from outside. Without criteria, the company will have no means of telling whether the person flown in is filling the role all right. If, unfortunately, the man is not, how can the project have any hope of succeeding?

The assessment criteria have everything to do with the positioning of a given website. That is, for any company to set up corporate website and probably use it to conduct eCommerce, first thing first is to position itself. At an earlier time when the Internet was all the rage, the assessment might be dispensed with. First of all, creativity trumped anything at that time. Second, people then had little idea how to assess even if they wanted to.

But nowadays, even pure Internet firms like Yahoo! and eBay are believers of bottom line, not to mention the traditional businesses. No corporation can tolerate a business unit free from any check and balance inside its organization any more; neither will other departments. Cooperation among departments, then, will be out of the question.

If the website is meant to conduct E-sales, then someone experienced in channel management should cut it and his performance will be fathomed by the sales volume he manages to put up. If, however, the website is positioned to handle customer service (E-service), then the responsible business unit will be evaluated using daily service provided and average time of service given to a single client as primary yardsticks. For this, again, one should go get someone with call center operation experience to be on top.

If the website is positioned to conduct E-Marketing, then the assessment should be based on how much the website manages to promote the brand name on the Net and how much the Internet events manage to increase number of visitors on the website and in the brick-and-mortar stores. Again, this responsibility should be entrusted to someone with hands-on experience in brand marketing.

If the website is expected to facilitate E-Supply Chain, then someone well learned in procurement should come into play and be evaluated by level of increase in inventory turnover rate and shortening of average time needed to complete the procurement process.

We can conclude from the above discussion that you do not necessarily need someone with experience in eCommerce from outside to conduct sales via the Internet however the website is positioned, since the operations will always be an extension of what's already functioning within a company.

The chain of errors could run from obscure website positioning->wrong person in charge->undesirable system/software choice->totally have no idea about whether the goal, if any, is achieved. Take this car company for an example. With the IT division in charge of an eCommerce project, no wonder the first question coming to their mind was that of which system to buy.

Business owners might think that these are matters for his employees to worry about. However, being business owners requires them to have an opinion on the positioning and purpose of the corporate website. At the very least, they should participate in the discussion and see to it that the general direction will be settled for a series of follow-ups to be on track.

For that to be possible, business owners must have good Internet literacy. They must speak the language of the Internet. After all, how can we expect someone who has not used the Internet ever and relies on his/her secretary for the sending and receiving of e-mails to contribute to a discussion that has everything to do with the Internet, not to mention leading it to a feasible conclusion? Business owners must quit paying only lip service to Internet and take action for a change.

In the next article, we will discuss how the Internet sales manager of a company should go about distributing work. (
2003/09/28 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to
China Internet/Telecom )