E-Business Impact on IT Management

site, but it's expected that more than $18 billion worth of merchandise will be sold in the United States during 1999 via e-Business. By 2003, Forrester Research estimates that nearly $53 billion will be spent via e-business sites in the United States. [RIGG99] We have seen unprecedented growth in the stock price of Internet companies that is often not based on profit, but on future potential. Clearly, stockholders are convinced that these companies have huge potential earning possibilities. Most of these companies have yet to deliver a profit in their current operations , as they have been investing to acquire market share. Amazon.com has not turned a profit, but has surprised far more established brick-and-mortar competition by offering more choices and faster service. 1 These companies are also finding competitors entering their marketplace to take advantage of the relatively low market-entry cost. However, that doesn't mean the cost to establish an e-business organization is zero. Why have the leaders in e-business moved into their current positions? One clear possibility is their focus on providing high quality service to their customers. These companies aren't merely meeting their current customers' needs, but have continued to increase value and quality of service to meet additional customers' needs. One example of a company who had difficulties in meeting customer service expectations was America Online (AOL). Several years ago when they changed their service to unlimited access, they found there was too much demand for their Internet service, which caused very poor service for their customers. Customers often found busy signals when they tried to log on to AOL's access modems. AOL acted quickly to upgrade their capacity by spending millions of dollars to significantly increase their ability to handle many more customers and E-business is having a significant impact on many of us in our everyday personal and business life. Conducting business on the Internet is happening at an ever-increasing rate as companies jump into e-business to increase their business while minimizing the cost of expanding physical sites. However, many companies have found that entering into e-business without proper management and planning has many drawbacks. This article highlights some of the challenges in properly managing an e-business site while incorporating IT Management with other business processes to support all customers, Internet and others. BACKGROUND There are currently over 150 million users who have access to the Internet worldwide. This number is growing so quickly …