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Drive with Care: People with Technology at Work

Presentation: M Daniels, VISTA "Information in Action" conference London and New York, 1999

We all, took a journey to get here today and in taking that journey we faced many decisions. In fact I took a journey which I expected to be half an hour, it took an hour. But we all faced decisions about which route should we take, how long, what conditions, what delays - road works, hazards unknown to us. Do we have sufficient petrol to make the journey? We all know how to manage the down the risk of accident and we understand the car dashboard and the many signals it conveys. But with all this preparation, knowledge and information, we know one thing is certain - we have to expect the unexpected.

A business journey is no different, merely more complex. We often find ourselves in different vehicles, with different capabilities, going at different speeds, often in different directions. But what we all want to do is avoid jams, accidents and breakdowns and of course - running out of petrol. However, with all this experience and all this knowledge, we are confronted everyday with the unexpected and we have to draw upon a large volume of skill and knowledge within the organisation that enables us to manoeuvre and move forward. The signals, the information that we receive within our businesses is often obscure. It comes from not only within the organisation but now increasingly from out with the organisation and instead of being proactive a lot of the information that we receive and how we deal with it is reactive and overly reactive. Often, the person who is the best equipped with the skills to deal with that the issue in itself, is not the person that receives the information.

What I want to do today is look at some of the journeys that we took yesterday, look at some of the challenges that confront us today, look at information and its utility within the business and finally look at a potential business architectural and technology model.

If we look at yesterday’s journeys, automating the transactions, we all experienced a huge amount of success in reducing the cost of doing business, we automated data entry, we reduced clerical administration and accounting and we reduced the cost of processing transactions. In fact it is difficult to see how we could have achieved the growth that we have all experienced under the old paper and people processes. However, Peter Drucker got it right, very little has changed, the processes within our businesses have remained basically the same. Often proprietary to an organisation and proprietary to an industry sector. Solutions are often inward looking and not focussed on the supply chain or the value chains but internal processes. Competitive advantage has been seen as driving down cost, reducing the cost of doing business, even if it has been at the expense of others within the chain. Clearly we have not learnt a lot. What are the results of this automation? Well we have ended up with data islands, we have ended up with information that is hard to find, hard to extract, where we often rely on a specialist to produce the simplest of reports, and by the way you have got to wait. And often when we get the information it is out of date.

Many decisions are made blind of the facts today and we remain very reliant on that organisation knowledge and skills inherent within the organisation. We clearly have an information and knowledge business exposure; we probably don’t recognise it. If we look at yesterday’s journeys also we have to look at the PC and local area network revolution. This was great we empowered the user. Well we did that so well that we found users that spent hours designing and over-engineering spreadsheets, power point presentations, word documents etc, etc, etc. And the gap was great, it was a significant gap between those who could and those who thought they could, and we can all relate to that. But the thing that was underlying is that is still questionable whether the right information reached the right people at the right time. All too often we failed to stop and think we just had to analyse everything. Ask yourself how many finance departments and marketing departments now have their own little Merlin’s who are the spreadsheet whiz kids within your organisations, I think you all can relate to that. What we found as a result of all this was that we had island technology, that spawned island information, and that information created more information and rather than making it easier to find information it was even more difficult to get it in what was now a seamlessly lawless maze of information. If we look at the mirriad of information islands that exist within the publisher’s front office it’s hardly surprising that it is virtually impossible to look at the information across the lifecycle of a title in any coherent manner. We still had, in fact we had increased our business exposure with regards to knowledge and information.

So that is two journeys down, the third journey was about sharing information with trading partners it is hardly surprising we discovered the obvious, information is not just internal. Sharing of data and information is critical but publishing still lags a hell of a long way behind other industries. And what information sharing takes place within publishing would be unaccepted to many industries today. However, movement has at least started. Throwing data internally or externally over the wall whether it is to trading partners or to colleagues without the insight and knowledge that makes it into information does not create the win win environment that we all seek to achieve it just merely replaces the postman.

So if we move over to today’s challenges, I think you can relate to this - how many of you feel like you are drowning in a sea of data? I do. We are bombarded with information, some of it is still only data, some of it has been collated into information, but we spend far too much time dealing with the wrong news. How many e-mails are circulated just for information? We now have the capability of firing off ‘just in case information’ are we expecting a response, a reaction or are we just merely covering our backs? Irrespective what you have to start thinking about is it all has to be read, it all has to be assimilated. We now, in the last 30 years have produced more information and published more information than in the previous 5,000 years. We can now externally get information pushed at us from newsletters and alerts and we can pull information in the form of self-service. One thing that is very frightening though, is that we all recognise that non-participation is a non-option, exclusion from the information chain has a terminal effect. Maybe on our businesses and definitely on our personal careers. How much of the information that you receive today makes a difference? How much of your time and day is spent dealing with noise? What information don’t you receive that would make a difference? Most importantly what are you doing about it? We have to take responsibility to learn to navigate safe passage. However, we must remember that we must not sink those on whom we also may depend.

The next challenge is equally as daunting, in fact it is probably even more daunting, it is that of convergence and intrusion. We are now open all hours. We used to be able to switch off the phone, but now due to mobile communications – we can’t, in fact we can never escape the phone and when we do we find a string of voicemails all crying out for our attention. We still have the constant delivery of faxes, e-mails and snail mail. We are constantly plugged in; anybody who thinks that they are not constantly plugged in is kidding themselves. We will do business with everybody, from anywhere at any time. Will it get worse? – Yes, telecommunications and information services are converging at an alarming rate. It is not just about access to it is also about the utility of access becoming inescapable. We can all remember life without laptops, personal phones, personal organisers etc. Unfortunately our new staff never knew life without them.

I’d like you to forget about SGML and XML and think about WML (wireless mark up language), or VXML (voice extendable mark up language) forget about GSM, what about GPRS – full e-mail and web browsing by a mobile communications, what about UMNTS which is due out in 2003, full broad brand wireless by mobile networks. We have to start thinking about convergence in a big way. King Canute failed to stop the tide. The question today is not whether we stop or contain, but how we manage and control this new wave of intrusion. We all need an automatic filter what we receive, when we receive it, and an absolute requirement to personalise this to reflect our individual needs. In the world of convergence it is essential that we establish new lines of demarcation between our social life and our work life.

Another challenge that we face today is that of e-business. The change from e-commerce to e-business is not understood by many. But it is so significant that many companies will miss the boat and will perish. It is not about physical world to the virtual world, it is not about digital product, it is not about any of these, it is about doing business irrespective of whether the product is physical, virtual or a combination of the two. The interesting thing is that early adopters may be seen to be working at a commercial disadvantage, they may be seen to be spending a lot of money with little return. They are getting huge return, they are learning the new rules, they are establishing brand, but most importantly they are getting knowledge and information about customers and the market which will be essential to competing in the new century and their survival. So what about the consumers? Well consumers today are besieged, we all in this audience have telemarketers ringing us at all hour, direct marketers stuffing post into our post boxes, relationship marketers wanting to know our every movements. 10% of worldwide e-mail is junk spam mail. Yesterday the vendor never really knew, ask yourselves - the publishers never really knew whether the customer was giving them 10%, 20% or 100% of their business.

We talked about relationship marketing, getting to know the customers every habits and taking a share of the wallet. But the reality is we didn’t, today consumers can be accessed and targeted in the on-line world but what we must remember is that they just as easily can target and access vendors and information. Yesterday the customer was happy to give personal information; he often had the option to refuse its use or sale to third parties. Today I ask you to look at your PC files and look at the profusion of cookies that are planted within them. What is quite clear is that now customers are starting to understand their information and feedback has real value and could become the tail that wags the dog. The customer is going to be king in the world of MyNet. We now find ourselves moving speed into a new permissions marketing environment which is very significant in terms of information. It is more significant for those that are going to become the new infomediaries who manage and control access to the information and channel to market.

The traditional vendor driven publishing model is now under pressure; in fact, it is going to die. Those who ignore this in the rising role of infomediaries may find that they are not driving the development of their products in the market but are firmly being driven by others down the supply chain who own the information, knowledge and access to the market. In this new personalised world publishers need to ensure that infomediaries don’t filter them out from their readers. So how do we prepare for the unexpected? Our first priority is quite clear, we must learn to swim in the sea of data. The schematic that is coming up depicts the basic information roles within the organisation and it varies by the actions required, from the routine to the exceptional, and from the systemised to those that are heavily dependant on human knowledge input. What we often do when we have designed systems in the past is try and satisfy all requirements by a single solution and end up servicing the lowest common denominator or alternatively we create different islands of information that are incapable of consistently seeing both the macro and micro perspectives. If we look at these quadrangles we clearly see the need to support clerical activities, the routine activities, the heavily systemised activities. Here it is about transactional information, here it is about automating as much as possible to gain maximum efficiency, and it is about checking it in and checking it out. Process management is often viewed the same way but it isn’t it is completely different here it is not about focusing on the performance of the task, it is about the performance of the process. Although it is still the same information the usage and needs differ greatly and also it requires additional information about resource allocation and the management of risk and change. It is all about keeping today on schedule.

The business analyst activities are different again. Here we are talking about monitoring and analysing overall business activities and performance actually looking at variance to exception, discovering the parameters that effect an operation or a process, data mining its about drilling down a wide volume of data, tapping into specific scenes and often not in a single dimensional view but in a multiple dimensional view. Here often analysis is performed on a data warehouse where the operational information from both internal to the organisation and external to the organisation could be aggregated. This approach obviously protects the operational environment from the performance demands of these techniques and also provides the analyst with both the wider business picture and the performance they require. The tools used vary considerably, from the spreadsheet to sophisticated modelling and forecasting tools. The service objective is to enable the analyst to "turn over the stones and look for the issues".

Management Decision Support is focused at the business key performance indicators, the issues that really matter. We are talking about management by exception, this is where we are talking about identifying what needs attention. Not fixing what isn’t broke but identifying what is broke and fixing it and what may be breaking and taking preventative action. It also needs to be proactive as well as reactive. Unlike the analyst the executive needs are proactive feed alerts, he hasn’t got time to go drilling down. He needs what we call traffic lighting, he doesn’t need to know when the signals are green, he needs to know when they are on red he also when they are on amber, and when on amber he also needs to know in which direction that the information is going. Here it is all about management by exception, identifying and understanding the issues that need attention.

Finally, I want to review a publishing business technology architecture that meets the challenges in information and knowledge. What is quite clear when you actually look at information and knowledge management is that a piece meal approach to a business is no good enough. In last years’ white paper we identified a unique publishing architecture that separated the constituent elements of both technology and its utility and what we discovered last year was not finite it has evolved and what we think of it now will be different in 6 months time as we continue to adapt and adopt it. If we look at the original concept, first of all it was built on databases, the database foundation in publishing is straight forward – content, books, chapters, journals, issues, pictures fragments etc. Context, the product information that describes the content and enables you and your customers to find and value it, and commerce the business information – pricing, inventory, customer sales etc. On top of that we have a number of business solutions, in the past we looked at these as applications all embracing, we now have to change our view of these, they are just merely processing engines.

If we actually look at these a bit closer we have back office engines that form a comprehensive operations environment handling products from warehouse to reader – and the support, customer service, ordering fulfilment. We are all familiar with these engines, but they are now engines not applications. There is a need for engines that deal with e-business and EDI – significantly different but recognising the critical role of standards and also the emergence of self-service over the Internet. And we have front office engines that focus on supporting editorial, production, and marketing and rights functions. Now all of these engines could be supplied separately by different vendors, in different formats etc, etc. but what is important and what is critical is that we have a seamless integration of that processing from author to warehouse. We then have a process layer and control layer which looks across the whole product and project life cycles and operations where we have consistency of analysis and reporting, we have data flow managing the flow of product, and work flow managing the flow of the process and controlling the process and then on top we have the converging presentation layer with windows and browsers.

Having looked at this we now need to look again, more closely and look at what is the impact of information and knowledge driven environment could have on this model. First of all, it quite clear that we now need to break down the different information needs and utility and provide consistency across the business. The obvious approach is to provide this through a data warehouse, but we must remember that we no longer ignore external information, and this is not just dealing with commercial information but also contextual information and even unstructured information. What we have done is to extend that further and reflect this within the different usages that we had already identified. Moving the work flow and data flow down closer to the engines that deal with the processing, because in fact they are process engines themselves.

However, we need to actually look at and prepare for the world of MI-NET, how are we going to deal with MI-NET, how are we going to deal with ensuring that the customer does not elect to bar us form their world?, or where they have elected to use us that we optimise that election? We need to profile, profile wealth within the organisation and external to the organisation of what is required, when it is required and how it is required. The schematic depicts how new access permission layers will need to be accommodated both internal and external to the organisation. But we need to beware, those that enter this permissions environment late will spend heavily on the skills and knowledge to enable them just to compete. If they fail to make the migration in customer relationship management they will perish in the world of the info-mediary and permissions marketing.

The new vision clearly sets out the agenda incorporating the extended information needs and knowledge input, what we have to do is be prepared that we now see clearly on the road ahead people with technology at work. What we must remember however, is can you remember all those dreams? The paperless office, tele-worketing, the virtual organisation, all too often in the past we have been presented with a prototype – and tactical priorities have dictated our direction, we have adopted a wait and see strategy. Today the pace of technology is changing and quickening at such a speed that it is no longer an option to join this marathon at mile twenty-one. You will not have the capabilities, competencies and skills within your organisations to even get to mile twenty-six.

Learning to continually learn is one of the hardest tasks, it is not restricted to the organisation, the relationships with trading partners and customers, new channels to market, the evolving products, formats, the business processes, the organisational structure, it is all these and more. It is about learning to adapt, adopt and advance technology, it is about learning to share information within a new open commercial environment, it is about tapping into and exploiting all of the information and knowledge available both internal and external to your organisations. But what is clear – it is about reducing your organisations knowledge and information exposure.

International Distribution and Supply Chain Specialist Meeting Frankfurt, October 2000

We can all relate to the driver, but today we now have to relate to the rabbits. We are caught in the glare of e-light of the e-revolutions that are bearing down on us at an alarming rate. What is certain, is that we can’t all expect this vehicle to brake and give us time to move.

Change within publishing is taking place at an alarming rate. Today, we all face many challenges in our business journeys. The question is, how we respond.

Do we:

• prepare against surprise - and build defence mechanism against the change
• prepare for surprise - and adapt to respond quickly to the changes as they occur
• or do we, recognizing the potential opportunities available, prepare the surprise itself

Today I intend to overview some of the traffic, that is bearing down on us and to offer some insights that may help us on our journeys and avoid us being caught, transfixed and blinded by the lights

The changes taking place today are significant. Larger players are getting larger and are changing the economies of scale and scope, vertical integration is blurring the roles of some within the supply chain, media convergence is introducing new players and globalization is challenging many of the traditional publishing "rules". Convergence and consolidation, is by itself, reshaping the supply chain.

We are all familiar with the impact that the likes of Guttenberg, Ingram and others had in shaping today's publishing environment. You may not be as familiar with the changes that effected the UK market in the 18th century. However, the 18th century literacy revolution completely changed the roles of booksellers, authors, printers and publishers. It redefined the value chain and removed a number of significant players. Like Guttenberg, Ingram and others, the likes of Robert Dodsley prepared the surprise in this revolution. The question we all must now ask is, who is preparing the surprise today?

Today, everyone is grappling with movement on these Product and Market axis. We all start from different positions, we all have different goals and different time-scales in which we aim to achieve them. Each of the following axis has a different impact, according to our roles within the value chain and the sector in which we operate:

The questions we now all need to ask are:

Where exactly are we? What is the position of the marketplace? Where do we want to go and in what timescales? What are the associated actions and risks.

Digitization is a subject in itself. The question of whether the ebook as we see it to today is a mere transitional stage like the CDROM and that broadband online technologies are the end game is another debate. The impact of the ebook alone is however forcing us to revisit standard such as the ISBN and the internet can clearly claim credit for the long overdue emergence of ONIX / EPICS standards. The jury remains out on the DOI.

In many cases we are not dealing with a future we can predict or control. We can't adopt a wait and see policy, if we do will not have the competencies to compete and more importantly will probably find others, sitting in our seat and eating our dinner.

Earlier this year I asked a similar audience to this, the following questions:

• When Simon and Schuster published “Riding the Bullet” by Stephen King and made it only available by digital download over the Internet, how many downloads were achieved in the first 24 hours?
• How many digital and e-articles appeared in The Bookseller in the first quarter of this year?
• How many online e-tailers databases are updated daily and weekly online with rich Bibliographic information via BookData?

The answers now seem dated, but when asked less than half the audience got any one question correct and they were extremely conservative in their responses.

We only need to open up our press today it see that the publishing e-lights are switched on.

The speed of change should not be doubted. A recent article in "wired" pointed out that technology is now outstripping Moore's law, which to-date, has accurately predicted the exponential rise computing processing power to time.

That change is happening should not be doubted. That all change costs money is a fact.

I think Terry McGraw captures the issue perfectly when he says its now about the speed of change.

However, we also have to remember that for some time the current traditional environment will still be the major revenue generator and will still require continued support and investment

In 1996, as a result of our research programme "Publishing in the 21ts Century", we predicted that the shift from physical to digital product would gather momentum in the year 2000, but that it would still represent the minority of the overall product mix. We also predicted that by 2020 the position would flip, with physical product becoming the minority of the mix. We are clearly moving in this direction and therefore face with an interesting quandary?

If we accept that overall growth in the market is at a marginal, say 3% to 5% and we take a hypothetical books and journals publisher with revenues around $80 million, we see marginal growth across the total business over the next 5 years. However we must respect that the e-publishing revenues will grow.

We could expect e-publishing growth over the same period to rise to 25% of revenues. Some may say this is conservative, others that it is generous. The point is that if we accept the principle, we have to accept that revenues from the physical product must decline to compensate the switch to electronic product. The principle is simple, if the revenues remain relative flat and electronic revenues is growing, then physical revenues must reduce

The publishers now find themselves having to continue to support the cost of the declining physical product overhead with declining revenues. Whilst at the other end they are having to invest heavily to make the e-publishing transition in order to realize the new potential revenues. A clear double wammy and new squeeze on the margins.

In this new environment we need to step back and realize we need to re-evaluate how we do business, the marketplace in which we do business, partners we do business with, our competitors etc. This is not an IT or logistics issue it is a corporate one that clearly forces strategic vision, corporate consensus and corporate action if we are to avoid being paralyzed by e-lights. Piecemeal actions are no longer the answer

I have drawn up 7 principles of e-business that I believe you should consider when formulating or reviewing your corporate e-business strategy. They are not comprehensive neither are they mandatory. They just make a lot of sense in this brave new world.

First is a focus on your core competency.

Recognizing the key elements of trading involve:

• Content the product in a digital, physical or any combination of media
• Context the bibliographic information that describes the product
• Commerce the commercials and customer information and processes

Just as within any environment, all are essential within the e-business world, 2 out of 3 will not do. All are linked irrespective of whether you are selling virtual or physical product or servicing customers the on the Internet

The key question to ask is where is your core competency, where do you add value in the evolving value chain and proposition?

Some may believe that they provided added value and competitive advantage by doing all three themselves and that they are truly self-sufficient.

You may develop and publish content, but can you provide it in every format, every type of ebook, Digitally distribute it, and provide it on demand? Or do you recognise the competency of others and outsource those tasks? Are you equally focused across your full list? Are you now focusing on being "never out of print?"

These are just a fraction of the new players on the radar of publishing who deal with content and need to be evaluated, understood and positioned. Many will fail, but what is certain, is that a number will succeed and will radically change aspects of publishing as we known them today. Are you comfortable that you understand their competencies and value add?

Remember, only a few years ago Amazon was dismissed by many. An interesting thought to ponder…is that all major trade publishers now have a clear vested interest in Amazon’s continued growth and success and that failure of the some of the dotcom’s could have a fatal impact on some.

Ask yourselves what the role of the wholesaler is today? Look at how many are currently positioning themselves for tomorrow. They clearly are embracing digital distribution, they are clearly providing total web fulfillment services to many bookstores, they are providing drop shipment and could even be regarded by some as distributors. What is their core competency and value add and where do they now position themselves in tomorrow's supply chain?

Second is a focus on Integration - not replication

When it comes to online fulfillment Publishers have a clear choice - replicate their commercial systems online or seamlessly integrated their e-business activity with their existing systems and existing information.

Unfortunately, many have learned the hard way. The skill and knowledge set required to achieve this business integration, is different to that owned by even the best web designers let alone the “garage boys”, that are all too often here today and gone tomorrow.

An example of replication. The commercial systems feed the digital warehouse in real time, with information on customers, products, trading terms etc. The consumer enters via an intermediary and selects the ebook and required format. They submit an order on behalf of the consumer to the digital warehouse, who proceed to download the ebook to the consumer and confirm the transmission to the etailor and the sale to the publisher. Finally, the publisher's commercial systems raise an invoice to the etailer. Seems fairly straightforward, until you start to think about the synchronization between the Digital warehouse and the publisher's commercial systems and the fact the digital warehouse will have to virtually replicate the publisher's commercial systems etc.

Unfortunately this process is not fictional but is one fraught with risk.

When we look at the integration options, we start to remove duplication and synchronization of data and replication of functionality. The solution is simple and importantly recognizes the core competencies of those involved and importantly is consistent with physical fulfillment.

There are many people who we now have to interface with. We need to think about how we interface them. Integration not replication is the only answer. Many who adopt a replication route will fail not because their digital warehouse was wrong but because they introduced risk and cost when it could have been avoided. Think about how you will need to synchronize functionality and data and not just with one but many partners. Critically, you are not just replicating your functionality and data, you could find, you are also giving away your customers and your interface with them.

Third focus on a Standard Interface

Many believe that the ability to process a credit card transition is all that is required today and that B2B and B2C are completely separate.

Increasingly, the demands of servicing even the B2C customers will become complex. They themselves will be more demanding and their needs will be driven not by what publishers can provide but by their total e-experience.

The need to manage all customer’s through a standard interface is compelling. It offers standardization, commercial flexibility, development economics and effective customer service.

Fourth focus on Core Relationships across the Value Chain

In one of our research reports, "The Impact on The Publishing Value Chain of Online Networks", we created, from the work of Professor Michael Porter, a modified Publishing Value Chain. It is critical that we focus on product and customer information and the associated trading terms across this lifecycle.

As illustrated by the initiatives such as ONIX/EPICS and the earlier BIC Basic, product information does not just materialise when the product hits the warehouse and neither does it stop there. Over 70 % of customer Service calls are about basic information. The demand for product information is exploding, after all if you can't find it you can't value it and you can't buy it.

Today all the major chains, e-tailers, wholesalers all have book in hand processes. Collectively this is a huge cost to all. It's primarily focus is to collect rich information which is often not available any other way. The problem is that this is too late in the lifecycle.

Inconsistent and inaccurate information is costing this industry millions and also losing sales.

The question is not so much as to who will provide the information to the marketplace, but how publishers will produce and provide the information in a timely manner.

To survive in this new environment, all publishers now need a rich product database with full export capability as much as they need a customer database and fulfillment system.

Fifth focus on the different user / community perspectives

Yesterday we would have built different systems for different users groups and even different networks.

Our problem is that we all have:

• Close relatives and friends with whom we share close information. (our Intranet)
• More distant relatives and friends we see less frequently and share less information with (our Extranet)
• Finally, relatives and people we only see at births, marriages and deaths and share little information with (our Internet).

However we have all three types within the same user groups and their individual closeness will vary over time.

In addition, we also have to recognise that the difference between what one group customers wants and another group may vary as little as 5%. There is often more commonality than we think.

We now need to recognise that there are many community builders out there. However we need to be wary. Some want to totally own their community, others only wish to be service providers. In all cases, we have to recognise what is best for the user and the community and ensure that intermediaries don't lock you out from even knowing who your customers are.

Again Terry McGraw recognizes the key focus required. Sharing information and trust, and in doing so understanding behaviour become important if not critical factors. Some today will give these away in the belief they are growing business, they are wrong, they are giving away their future.

Sixth - focus on servicing everybody - not the just the few

Although it is relatively easy for large publishers to trade electronically with large booksellers, this is often restricted to base transactions and rarely filters down to the 80% that constitute 20% of value and volume but a high cost of service.

Here we see traditional communications such as fax, phone and even post. EDI or e-commerce is often too complex and costly to prevail, is not real time and doesn’t deal with customer service queries effectively.

Also we need to remember that 40% of the UK Book trade is export, they can’t be ignored, they need 24 x 7 hour access to their information and ability to trade both efficiently and effectively.

Last - focus on Web access

Yesterday users wanted an integrated desktop, one from which they could access all their information in a consistent manner. Today is no different except it is no longer restricted to the confines of the local environment, it is global and more important people now only want to see and have access to their world. They want "My Web", identification, personalization and consistency from anywhere and anytime. ebusiness is about providing solutions to all both inside and outside of the organization.

Theses seven principles are not fixed they are fluid, they will evolve but they are today's issues. The technology exists, the opportunities exist what is now required is a broad e-business vision, a corporate strategy and the business commitment to make it happen.

Today we must stop thinking that ebusiness is different. It is business.

We now need to cross the road, recognise the opportunities, actions and risks and avoid being caught in the glare of the e-light.

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