Business web strategy

Strategy is about predicting the future and ensuring we know where we want to go, so that we can develop the appropriate plans to move in that direction.

It has become more important than ever before for IT management to participate in business strategy formulation. An organisation’s ability to implement corporate strategies and achieve corporate goals depends on its capacity to effectively useIT. Investment in IT, and especially in web technologies can
provide six strategic business objectives: operational excellence; new products, services and business models; customer and supplier intimacy; better decision making; competitive advantage; and ultimately, survival (Laudon & Laudon 2006).

This book provides a wealth of information across the lifecycle of web-enabled businessprocesses from strategy through design to implementation. Suggest innovative business models and frameworks to evaluate the business benefits from web-based business systems.

It comprises 18 chapters organized into three sections: Web strategy design, Web strategy alignment, and Web strategy applications.

Introduction

The Web has changed our way of living, our habits, the way we work, the way weinteract with the people we know, and, all in all, the way we deal with the thousands of tasks we are confronted with in our daily lives. We do not need to go personally to a bank any longer, we order bank transfers or check our balances by connecting to our bank’s Web site. We just click on the site of a tour operator and carry out the required operations to book our holidays. If we are lookingfor software that meets our requirements but we do not want to bear the expenses of the related licenses, we just need to find it in one of the many open-source communities that are present on the Web. If we want to tell other Web users about ourselves, about what we do, our hobbies, and maybe even our dreams, what we need to do is to open a blog. Likewise, if we want to establish a socialnetwork or expand it, we can simply access one of the many free or pay-services present on the Web, such as Facebook, Myspace, and so forth. We could present an endless list of examples here.

Statistics (ACTUALIZAR)

1. The number of Internet users in the world reached 1.4 billion persons in 2007; that is one fifth of the world population (Internetworldstats, 2008).
2. Web access is commonnowadays in the most economically developed areas of the world: about two out of three U.S. citizens (71.1%) regularly access the Internet. In Australia and in Europe the percentage of Internet users is 57.1% and 43.4%, respectively. In Europe, however, there are some geographical areas where Internet penetration is considerably higher than the North American average; this is true for Norway (88%),the Netherlands (87.8%), and Iceland (85.4%) (Internetworldstats,2008).
3. The Internet is growing exponentially. The number of Internet users increased globally by 265.6% during the period 2000-2007 (Internetworldstats, 2008).
4. Interestingly, the growth rate in the number of Internet users in the developing countries during 2000-2007 is higher than that in developed countries(Internetworldstats, 2008). The increase in the number of Internet users in North America, Australia, and Europe in the period 2000-2007 was equal to 120.2%, 151.6%, and 231.2%, respectively. The growth rates of Internet users in Middle East (920.2%), Africa (882.7%), Latin America (598.5%), and Asia (346.8%) are astoundingly high growth rates.
5. The global number of Web sites was approximately 550million in January 2008, witnessing an increase by 25% as against the same period in 2007 and by roughly 648% in comparison with January 2000 (Internet System Consortium, 2008).
6. A survey carried out by Burst Media (2008) finds 67.7% of the respondents (13,000 Web users) emphasize that their daily routine would be disrupted if Internet access was not available for one week. Furthermore, 42.9% of...