E-business continues to evolve
Supply chain management, CRM new buzzwords
By Brian Carroll -- Furniture Today, December 29, 2002
More than two years since dot-bombs began littering the e-business landscape, much of the energy, money and hype has turned away from using the Internet to sell to consumers and toward making businesses more responsive, efficient and transparent.
Supply chain management, customer relationship management and collaborative planning are among the new buzzwords, replacing eyeballs, banner ads and killer apps.
It is not that Internet retailing is dead by any means, rather that the shakeout has established who the players are and that good retailing online is not that much different from good retailing offline. Long gone are the orgies of venture capital, crazy brand-building promotions and bulging advertising budgets.
In the absence of headline-grabbing stunts like the Homepoint.com Liberty Bowl (remember that doozy?), attention has turned to information technology projects, practices and tools that can demonstrate a return on investment and a give a boost to the bottom line.
Line 56, a company devoted to e-business research and publishing, released a survey last month that predicts e-business spending will increase to 27% of information technology budgets in 2003, or a 49% leap over 2002. Top priority will be put on business intelligence, followed by customer relationship management, Web services, and e-procurement. Line 56 surveyed more than 730 executives across many industries.
With these macro trends in mind, Furniture/Today asked several furniture industry executives whose business it is to leverage the Internet and its related technologies to share their predictions for furniture-related e-business trends in 2003. Here's what they see:
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Supply chain management will take a front seat in many IT budgets that are charged with doing more with less.
There will be significant expenditures and application efforts "to support the infrastructure necessitated by the globalization of our industry," said Talmage Fish, vice president at Hooker Furniture and chairman of the IT division of the American Furniture Manufacturers Assn. "Another major trend will be the utilization of business intelligence or knowledge management software and applications to deliver extremely sophisticated business analysis for executive management decision-making." -
More retailers will list prices on the Web.
"Consumers are demanding it and rightfully so," said Gary Chase, president at FurnifureFan.com, an Internet marketing company. "Can you imagine buying airline tickets and not disclosing the price because they fear that the competition would know what you are selling something for? This is crazy." Chase also predicts that manufacturers also will begin presenting pricing information, though it will take longer to happen. -
UPC bar codes will become mandatory on all furniture products, including custom upholstery and case goods.
Ron Martell, chairman at software and systems company Micro*D, also predicted that printed price lists will become obsolete as electronic product catalogs distributed via the Internet become common. And as much as EDI is loathed, Martell forecasts its continued use as the large retailers mandate it. -
Online retailing in furniture will continue to be more about providing information and facilitating shopping and less about executing transactions online.
Steve Antisdel, president at FurnitureFind.com, a leading furniture e-retailer, saw sales through 2002's first three quarters jump 113% over the similar period of 2001. He attributes that growth to the trust FurnitureFind has established with its customers. "We see our target consumer — busy soccer moms — using the online channel as a convenient way to do research," Antisdel said. -
Dramatic changes will occur in the ways trading partners connect.
Ron Sellers, vice president of sales at FurnishNet, said he anticipates that within the next three years, the number of companies adopting Internet-based electronic document exchange will exceed the number of EDI implementations. "Wal-Mart, for example, recently mandated that all of their trading partners move to an Internet-based protocol for document exchange," Sellers said. "We see this as a major trend for the future that will allow retailers and manufacturers of all sizes to be able to exchange documents electronically." -
Not only will electronic document transfers become more common, they will be required.
"The technology to facilitate electronic data exchange between firms has become more affordable, convenient and easier to deploy," said Manoj Nigam, president at Exim Technologies, a business-to-business e-commerce company. "Just as electronic data exchange has been a requirement for suppliers to do business with larger departmental stores in the past, in 2003 and beyond the electronic transactions exchange will become a requirement for staying in business in the furniture industry for retailers, manufacturers and carriers." -
More innovation ahead.
Ames Flynn, vice president and chief information officer at Thomasville, and president of AFMA's IT division, is predicting that a "killer app" will be introduced "by at least one or two retailers and manufacturers" by the end of 2003. He also thinks there will be a great deal more experimentation on the Web to augment the traditional selling process. "Technologies will mature and designers will develop skills to interact with consumers for online advice," Flynn said, referring to room planning, customization and the like. -
Big questions on the horizon.
Clearly how business will be conducted on the Internet is still being determined, and the outcome is far from apparent. Can the industry agree on more standards, then adopt them? Will proprietary systems become increasingly open in order that systems integration can more quickly occur at less cost? How do companies avoid drowning in change? And what does it mean to increasingly be a part of a world economy and global market?
These are just some of the questions facing the furniture industry as it gets ready to crack the cellophane on a new calendar year.
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