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SLIDE 2
What has become clear from sharing views with others, not just with what we have experienced, is that, there really are some very fundamental shifts in the way business is being conducted. These are not just what we superficially hear about and experience just by being connected but are more to do with the whole structure of a firm. E.commerce can become the integrator, the co-ordinator of all a firms departments and appears more and more synonymous with the discipline of marketing. But even more so it seems that there are no longer rigid departmental structures or hierarchies in true e.commerce firms. There is specialisation, such as we have a printing department. But every action by someone, say in the printing department, has an immediate knock on piece of information to another part of the company or even directly to a customer or supplier. These all effect the ways we inform and keep in touch with customers and their expectations but, of great management importance is the new ways we are able to inform each other within the firm of what's going on and what decisions need to be made. For instance, from an electronic note given by our digital offset press our customer can be informed of delivery time. At the same time, stock control can be updated at our suppliers so that an automatic order is placed and delivered as appropriate. It suits our suppliers because they do not have to panic as we do not suddenly run out, it suits our customers since they know when they will obtain delivery, it suits our admin. since there is none. Its all information viewed through a browser with very little manual decision making. Indeed decision making is now concentrated on exceptions to make them normal and on making things even more streamlined. Customers more or less control everything, all we have to do is help them do what they want. Customers have themselves become full participants in the factory. It is, however, important to state that there has to be some acceptance that internal feathers will be ruffled. The people actually doing the jobs are in better positions to absorb the detail of day to day activities and customer perceptions of the firm than some levels of management, especially where the managers are not as instinctively able as many of their employees to go with the flow and be flexible. Feedback is becoming King of communications and those that are living the organisation are the growers of the organisation. It's their tentacles that are feeling the way, instinctively and often spontaneously responding to make their products and services better and better.
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