The Link of Objectives to Strategies
E-business has rapidly developed from being a vision of the future world of business to being “the” way of doing business (Whelan & Maxelon, 2001). This business opened new channels for communication and selling, a new source of data on customers and competitors, and changed the face of competition tremendously (Koutsoukis, Dominguez-Ballesteros, Lucas, & Mitra, 2000; Porter, 2001). Clearly, business processes of the 21st century must be more efficient and dynamic to build and sustain value across the organization, though having a dot-com presence does not necessarily point to success. As Raisinghani and Schkade (2001) pointed out “perhaps, one of the best ways to succeed in the world of e-business is to start off with a dynamic and new e-business strategy” (p. 601).
E-business is far more about strategy than technology. An effective e-business strategy is an elaborate and systematic plan of action that incorporates different organizational levels, different parties, different elements, and growth pattern features (Bakry & Bakry, 2001). Unlike traditional business strategy, e-business strategy considers a company’s business management architecture and how it can be improved, integrated and automated by instant and global Internet communication. Indeed, the Internet has spawned new e-business strategy and radically transformed existing models (Basu & Muylle, 2002; Pant & Ravichandran, 2001). These new models incorporate Internet technology, universal connectivity, and Web browser capabilities to integrate business processes within and beyond an enterprise. As a result, old business models should be adapted to the new conditions, and companies worldwide should develop an effective e-business strategy to fit the new conditions (Whelan et al., 2001).
What distinguishes many of the dot-coms from traditional organizations is not their new technical power, but their innovative and imaginative new business models (Hamel, 2000). This study proposes a balanced scorecard based e-business framework for the development and assessment of e-business strategy in this new age. Aided by this innovative and comprehensive e-business framework, managers can identify the major decision factors involved in their e-business strategies, specify the direct and indirect relationships among the factors, and generate strategies that would improve overall business performance.