Mubin Ul Haider | Mubin Haider | 7-Eleven
It is not an easy task to assess the growth and impact of the Internet. First, there exists only a relatively small number of early adopters. Second, the non-technical factors that characterize the early adopters, including demand for particular services and requisite technological literacy,
are not likely to characterize the next wave of users. Third, efforts to assess the evolution of
the network are complicated by the tumultuous nature of the telecommunications, computer and digital markets. However, according to SRI International’s Business Intelligence Program
those companies which have adopted a leading role in the operation and expansion of the
world’s information infrastructure have been profoundly affected by it.
While the Internet has made online services and value-added networks adapt their product strategies rapidly and has encouraged software firms to think about the way they distribute their products, for the vast majority of companies, the Internet is and will continue to be more of an opportunity than a threat. As it evolves, its near-term impact will be far greater on publishing – an industry which has consistently monitored the development of new media – than on industries closely tied to media markets, such as retailing. The opportunity remains, however, for businesses outside the traditional networking domain to use this cheap source of communication for more focused strategic advantage.
Indeed, competitive advantage will accrue to those who carefully weigh the technical, economic
and cultural factors to identify appropriate applications and users. The major short-term effect of the Internet will be on the company/client relationship. Communication tools available on the Internet,
including Web sites and e-mail, provide the means to expand and enrich the level of communication
between a company and its customers. Time-shifted, convenient and inexpensive communications will provide the means of obtaining continuous feedback about products and services. The Internet will enable and accelerate the process (already well under way in the business world) in which selling products becomes more a matter of establishing an ongoing relationship than of performing a single
isolated transaction.
The Internet will also improve corporate memory. As the spectrum of company documentation and data becomes amenable to access, corporate documents will turn into readily accessible historical documents with the passage of time. A marketing plan or research initiative abandoned as premature several years previously will remain accessible until the time is right for implementation, in spite of computing architecture changes that occur in the meantime. In the longer term, the rise of the Internet
in association with other computer communications technologies promises to alter business organization and process fundamentally.
Videoconferencing and e-mail are both serving to “flatten” organizational structures. As video-conferencing capabilities become convenient and readily accessible, a new form of meeting will emerge: a casual, quick and informal exchange among several “talking heads” on the computer screen; a meeting in which traditional signs of rank and status will be muted or entirely absent. Similarly, e-mail is less obtrusive and intrusive than personal visits or even telephone calls, so its use does not follow the protocols associated with other business communications. A subordinate is much more likely to communicate with superiors if e-mail systems are in use throughout an organization. Groupware is yet another application which is capable of transforming business and management
structures. One of the major challenges for e-mail and other groupware tools is to replicate important
informal communication sources. Some companies that require a high degree of interaction with clients, and therefore a mobile workforce, are already implementing early versions of such replication. Xerox is researching ways in which geographically disparate workers, in this case copier repair technicians, can communicate and learn from one another via computers in the same way as localized employees trade war stories about particularly thorny repair problems.
Mubin Ul Haider
Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy
Volume 6 · Number 1 · 1996 · pp. 29–30
© MCB University Press · ISSN 1066-2243
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