Section 9: Conclusion

It's such a new field. It's just that nobody is the expert (Interview, 2001).

At the outset of this work, we pinpointed some overarching issues that we wanted to focus on. These research questions were:

• Are any categories of ITOL projects more successful than others?
• What do the ITOL projects reveal about critical success factors for e-commerce projects?
• To what extent do the ITOL projects support current views related to e-commerce and new organisational forms enabled by the same?

In the context of the foregoing discussions, we will attempt to answer these questions in the following section.

9.1 Success in terms of categories

It was not evident in the research that one particular category was more successful than the other. Given that the present study was an exploratory one, future research can build on findings from this to generate and test some hypotheses.

Success was measured in terms of achieving project objectives, although in many instances where these objectives were altered or not met, there was a sense of success in learning and knowledge gained from the experience. For many projects there was a belief that the work took longer, was harder than had been initially anticipated, and cost more in time, resources and energy. From the lessons learnt, some interviewees indicated that there are many things they would have done differently. While most had already spent all of the grant money, projects were still ongoing especially those with long-term objectives. As one interviewee (2001) put it:

Some projects were successful in a pilot sense but were finding it difficult in building up from there. For others, there was success in terms of being able to overcome technological problems and in terms of technology not being an issue. But participants realised that this was not a measure of overall success and that this merely enabled the larger challenges of culture, change, and training issues to be undertaken. Again, another successful ITOL project admitted that: "The business is still losing money but it will stabilize and we will pursue e-commerce globally" (Interview, 2001).

A key issue was that success had also to be measured in terms of the ability to "Prove to the business and finance community that this is worth doing" (Interview, 2001). As one succinctly put it: "The penultimate milestone is to 'hand-over' the program to the industry, via an association of some sort. We are confident that this will take place" (Interview, 2001).

9.2 Critical success factors

Many of the projects echoed the sentiments of one participant (2001) who claimed that everything was about people issues rather than technological ones. Certainly, across a broad range of projects, many have come to realise that managing people, relationships, and business processes is harder than managing technology. And so the choice of project manager is crucial to the project's success.

What also emerged from interviews especially were the importance of preparation, the need for projects to be driven hard, the need for personal representation and effective communication, and the key issue of change management. Vital also were the understanding of the need for a strategy perspective and the notion of transformations. The following is indicative: "The key issue is that it is not enough to put communications in place: you need to change businesses" (Interview, 2001).

The capacity to work in co-opetition in order to share solutions to common problems necessitated overcoming resistance to the norms of competition. As one project manager (2001) put it, the real challenge was in "gaining and maintaining ongoing involvement ... and in building winning teams ... comfortable at working together."

Effective management was required for the e-commerce transformation of organisations. Moreover, it was important to overcome the lack of appreciation of the potential benefits of e-commerce to industry as a whole. Indeed, as one interviewee (2001) put it, it still seems the case that many perceive e-commerce as "Nice to have, [but] NOT a must have."

9.3 Practice in relation to theory

Future research can build on empirical exploratory studies such as the present one to develop and test hypotheses regarding critical success factors in e-business collaboration. For as Hoffmann and Schlosser (2001, 377) stated, "there is a strong need for collaboration research tailored to the specifics of SMEs ... "

Certainly, for many of the projects, collaboration was the key to survival, renewal, and growth, especially in regional areas where the threat of global competitive dynamics often drove alliances. In the majority valuable lessons were learnt throughout the project tenure, although some lessons may well have been learnt earlier from previous projects had information flows been better expedited in some cases. Some of the projects clearly demonstrated the novel although others who could have done so were hampered by the difficulties of change management, especially in changing mindsets, behaviour, and traditional business or government practices. Nevertheless, many of the projects clearly understood the sentiments expressed by Hamel (2000, 89 & 91): "An imaginative use of partners can be the key to industry revolution. ... Coalition members are more than partners; they share directly in the risk and rewards of industry revolution."

In relation to the notion of online communities, which initially undergirded the current research, there are small pockets of these (especially in regional projects), but certainly this is not a dominant pattern at this stage in Australia's e-commerce evolution in terms of the detailed criteria in Section 3.3. These potential online communities are evolving rather than having arrived and the notion of consortiums (another type of collaboration) still dominates.

Nor is there enormous growth as yet in b2b per se. Indeed one interviewee (2001) summarised the issue very succinctly:

Certainly from the present study, alliances and collaboration, especially in the e-commerce environment, are not magic bullets or quick-fix solutions for SMEs or even larger organisations, communities, or industries. Transformation in an e-commerce environment is ideal. However, as with many endeavours in the online world, the ideal often must give way to pragmatic reality. Here, whether as real communities or consortiums, what tends to dominate is a much more gradual evolution. As was evident in the ITOL projects studied, e-commerce collaboration is not about instant creation and instant payback. And indeed, this is entirely consistent with the wider e-commerce experience and characteristic of online projects in general.

The rise of collaborative online e-communities, made possible by the Internet, presents a major evolutionary challenge and change to traditional modes of organizing, to many current management practices and to management theory. In successful alliances, undergirded by risk sharing, mutual benefit, learning, and enhancing competitive advantage where appropriate, the endeavours are clearly worthwhile as international research demonstrates and as is evident in many of the ITOL projects. Where commitment, compatibility, shared strategic intent are at the heart of collaborative relationships, success and learning is much more likely to occur. This is especially important if we accept that, when successfully managed, such collaboration enhances business and government capabilities through the opportunity for the crucial learning and innovation our organisations and societies require in the 21^st century in order to survive and prosper in increasingly challenging times.