Get web-oriented

Software exports have become one of the most attractive and fast-growing industries in India with the IT Task Force setting a target of ...

Software exports have become one of the most attractive and fast-growing industries in India with the IT Task Force setting a target of 50 billion by 2008. The size of this task can be understood if one looks at the current industry which is just touching a 5 billion level. Since the entire growth of the industry is led by the needs of global customers, the technological environment of the customers becomes a key factor in influencing the planning processes and strategies of our software companies. A case in point is the worldwide spread of the Internet. With the e-commerce revolution gathering momentum and expected to reach a breathtaking level of 450 billion by 2002, it is widely expected that most information systems will need to be Web-enabled and corporations will spend megabucks on this effort. The immediate implication has been that every reputed software company has internet and e-commerce as part of its strategy.

The pull factors exerted on the corporation by its external environment arecompounded by the push given by rapid advances in IT. This push, largely driven by the rapid proliferation of internet and the usage of associated internet technologies within firms in the form of intranets and extranets has resulted in new paradigms of business emerging. A typical example is the popularity of an internet service called priceline.com, which allows a customer intending to take a flight anywhere in the USA to name a price at which he is willing to travel on a particular day. Within 24 hours, any airline willing to fly the customer on that day at that price can confirm the transaction and the customer will have the ticket delivered to him.

Other major players are also beginning to generate significant revenues in the other three segments. FedEx, Cisco and Intel are reporting multi-billion dollar business-to-business transactions. Another popular internet startup e-bay has brought the concept of the virtual auction to the consumer-to-consumer space. Pioneers like priceline.com are turning theentire marketing paradigm on its head and making consumer-to-business transactions the new way of booking airline tickets, hotel rooms and soon, every form of service whether the customer is keen to name his price rather than ask for discounts.

While e-commerce is one visible usage of the internet phenomenon, another internal innovation that is happening in many companies is that of knowledge management. The corporate portal is the logical culmination of technological advances in the areas of knowledge archival and dissemination, internets, intranets and extranets and managerial innovations in the areas of shared learning and corporate experience building. In its early deployment in many companies, the corporate portal is nothing more than a customised computing front-end for each and every employee in an organisation which permits a customised user interface with the large storehouse of data, information and knowledge that exists in departmental, industry databases and data warehouses.

It combines manyevolutions like the e-mail, groupware computing capabilities, personalised information retrieval and collaborative working with the new science of knowledge networks which enables the conversion, storage and on-tap availability of erstwhile tacit knowledge in explicit and accessible formats. While each of these areas of internet, e-commerce and knowledge management hold tremendous promise for software export firms, there is a need to revisit every element of corporate strategy and organisation design to orient the company8217;s resources to meet challenges.

The author is Managing Director of Aptech Ltd