IMPLEMENTATION AND MANAGEMENT OF E~PROCESSES

A strong management team is a critical requirement for every financial venture and for Internet-oriented ventures, and indeed the successful ones need to operate with a combination of managers and IT staff who can work together to define the business and technical requirements (technology at the service of business).

The implementation issues facing companies seeking to understand and master e-processes are often difficult and contradictory. This is because an Internet-enabled company often necessitates a business structure which can be completely new and alien to the existing management structure.

As a case in point, consider the fact that managers typically have subordinates working for them, and they can monitor, set objectives, and ‘‘see’’ the performance of these subordinates. In an e-operations structure, suppliers as well as clients may be third parties linked via the Internet, and the monitoring and control mechanisms required, as well as the nature of these relationships, will be completely different. Hence, not only is the work environment completely different, but the models and structures tying the various players together in new ways are also completely different.

Companies will often need to call in outside consultants from specialist boutiques or from some of the major consultant firms such as Accenture or PwC to assist them in examining their existing IT infrastructures, and to analyze their needs, and then formulate appropriate organizational structures as well as the hardware and software decisions and implementation strategy. The advantage of this is that a vendor-independent opinion is theoretically possible; the disadvantage is that the customer is dealing with generalists as opposed to specialist experts.