Guide to successful eBusiness collaboration

Guide to successful eBusiness collaboration (File size: 445Kb)

Introduction

This guide is designed to help Australian businesses prepare for eBusiness. It draws on lessons learnt through the Government 's Information Technology Online (ITOL) program and points out some of the common challenges and pitfalls companies may encounter as they seek to embrace the Internet and other eBusiness technologies. The principles outlined here focus on the development of collaborative industry projects in particular, rather than those completed in isolation by individual businesses.

Collaborative eBusiness can take two forms: whole of industry sectoral solutions or supply-chain solutions.In the first instance, Australian eBusiness models have evolved to the point where they are now primarily about working in groups to facilitate sector-wide involvement in order to maximise benefits across industries. Here influence, business efficiencies and other factors are more evenly spread and it becomes easier to sustain win-win situations for all players.

Collaboration between buyers and suppliers within a supply chain can achieve efficiencies through economies of scale and use of common infrastructure. EBusiness thrives on collaborative uses of open technological platforms and business processes, which in turn relies on partnerships and cooperation. For many Australian companies collaborative communities are already emerging. By linking these communities to form collaborative knowledge networks there will be an even broader impact on how companies operate in the future.

This guide highlights some best practice principles for eBusiness collaborative solutions, based on:

• lessons from collaborative projects funded under the Federal Government 's Information Technology Online (ITOL) grant program,administered by the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE);
• a recent report on the ITOL experience which was conducted jointly with the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM)*;
• research and work undertaken by NOIE on sectoral facilitation; and
• experiences of eBusiness practitioners.

Principles for eBusiness Success

• Focus on the Business Challenge NOT the Technology
• Is it Integral to your Business?
• Consider all Key Stakeholders
• Secure Commitment from Industry Champions
• Prepare Thoroughly
• Select an Experienced Multi-disciplined Project Facilitator
• Choose your Technology and Technology Partner carefully
• Lock in Key Roles and Responsibilities
• Establish a Sufficient and Equitable Funding Model
• Develop a Detailed and Staged Project Timeline.

These principles are also a useful resource for those organisations participating in the ITOL program, which encourages the development of collaborative projects that identify and adopt commercial uses of the Internet to support growing productivity and profitability.

ITOL has provided leverage for industry groups to come together to solve common problems on an industry-wide basis rather than working individually and unnecessarily duplicating, or worse, developing closed or even conflicting solutions. These projects have raised eBusiness knowledge in diverse regions, in businesses and in the broader community, driving constructive collaboration and the growth of eBusiness capabilities.

More than 70 per cent of ITOL participants have stated that eBusiness will be critical in their industry over the next three years, and that their projects had had a major impact in raising awareness and accelerating eBusiness adoption among their target beneficiaries, consortium members and industry sectors.

Since the program's inception in 1996, over $7.5 million in grants have been provided to 81 eBusiness projects across arrange of industry sectors as diverse as agriculture, building and construction, environment, health, finance, tourism and social services. Each of these projects has fostered a high level of industry collaboration.

ITOL Grants by industry sector

This chart illustrates the distribution of ITOL grants (81) by sector. The number of projects in each sector is shown in brackets.

 

Supplementing this guide are case studies about companies that are proceeding well down the eBusiness pathway. These case studies disclose experiences learnt by the ITOL community in the process of developing collaborative eBusiness solutions. For more information please click here.

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"Forging and Managing Online Collaboration:The ITOL Experience." This study was a collaborative project between NOIE and Macquarie University. ISBN 1 74082 006 1.
ISBN 1 74082 001 0

©Copyright of Australia 2002
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968,no part may be
reproduced by any process without the prior written permission from the Commonwealth. Requests
and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights in this publication should be addressed to:

Manager,
Public Affairs,
National Office for the Information Economy,
GPO Box 390,
Canberra ACT 2601

Need Further Information?
More information about Collaborative eBusiness and the ITOL program is available at:
Website: www.noie.gov.au/itol
Email: itol@noie.gov.au

• Document ID: 41875 |
• Last modified: 6 February 2008, 12:38pm