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Dotcoms told to go back to business basics.

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorTownley, Gemma
PositionBrief Article

The bursting of the dotcom bubble shows that firms need to concentrate more on traditional business skills and less on technology if they want to succeed on-line

Companies are concentrating too much on the technological potential of the web and not enough on customer needs and supporting culture. WAP technology and internet on TV will encourage the use of the web, but the human attention span will limit the amount of time people actually spend on-line, delegates were reminded at a recent e-business conference.

"The internet will not make people eat more food or wear more clothes, it is simply a different channel of communication," warned Tom McGuffog, director of e-business at Nestle UK, speaking at the European Forum for Electronic Business (EEMA) conference.

But, he added, companies that do not rework their business to take advantage of the internet will lose out to competitors. "It's not just about selling on-line or marketing on-line," he said. "The internet enables you to share knowledge, refine processes, automate more processes, measure service, analyse what customers are doing and change products accordingly."

Eric Blum, director of internet company Informix agreed. "We've reached the end of an era with the dotcom phenomenon," he said. "Many dotcom companies failed because they didn't have an in-depth understanding of supply chain issues and other business fundamentals. Now firms are realising that it isn't about the number of customers, it's about the profiles of those customers."

To succeed in e-business, Blum argued, companies need to rethink the way they work. It is not...

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