There is no denying that the Internet brings in far reaching changes. What makes for equally compelling reading are the kind of internal and external efficiencies that it infuses into an organisation. Presented below are instances of how companies have harnessed technology to their advantage and improved their returns on investment. It demonstrates that there is more to the Web than building a brochure for a company, putting it on-line and touting it as Web presence.

Samsung Electronics (India)
Samsung Electronics is a well-known MNC with interests primarily in electronics. What it had been essentially looking out for was a solution that would allow seamless integration of its business processes.

Samsung’s distribution network spans six distributors throughout India, with head office in Delhi and headquarters and factories in Korea. It also has production bases in Malaysia and China.

Earlier the business processes were dependent on conventional modes of communication like telephones and faxes. Typically, all distributors had to place their orders with the Delhi liaison office that are in turn approved and advanced to headquarters followed by the factories in Malaysia or China.

The entire processes involved not only created a rift in the supply chain but also inconvenienced distributors and dealers. Though similar documents were transferred with updation from one office to the other, the distribution time cycle spread over 40 days.

Samsung then commissioned DBS Internet, a Mumbai-based company that offers business-to-business solutions on the Internet. Their brief "to implement an automatic order processing solution to reduce the time lag in processing orders, leading to better inventory management.

The solution generated the entire order processing on-line from purchase orders to corresponding perform invoice and L/Cs to actual delivery schedules, reducing the entire business process cycle to 20 days.

The biggest advantage of on-line transaction processing is that business has become on-line and near real time. Downtime is now reduced to the minimum and has resulted in an improved quality of service and customer satisfaction.

While ensuring smooth business processes it was equally important to motivate the distributors by way of incentives. Samsung immediately switched over to on-line tracking performance "Star Points" that could receive data from the central sales repository and calculate rating on the basis of certain parameters. The on-line tracking system allows Samsung to quickly devise and improvise dealer incentive schemes and thus keep an important element of its sales channel satisfied.

With endless data flowing in through on-line transaction processing and various dealer networks, it became essential for Samsung to capture the data and convert it into strategic information for further analysis. The implementation of On-line Analytical Processing (OAP) in the business process further enabled the Korean company to get a multi-dimensional view of data collected and enhance its decision support system.

OAP gave Samsung an insight into the data collected through various channels, enabling it to use the valuable information to support decision making processes.

With the deployment of IT for business process and tracking performance, Samsung wanted to extend its on-line services to take care of after sales services for its customers and dealers. It decided that an on-line customer care element in the solution would be ideal in this respect. This would offer customers the flexibility to reach Samsung directly and register their feedback as also select deals and service centres on-line.

On-line communication with customers and dealers has helped Samsung monitor complaints better, thus ensuring truly world class customer care.

GE Lighting
General Electric’s (GE) lighting division has 26 assembly plants that run 24 hours a day. If a single part in any of the machine fails, it means lights out for the entire assembly line.

Such problems were dealt with the old fashioned way " placing an order with the machine-tool suppliers. Not so any more. GE is using the Internet. It has realised that tight supply chain integration is no longer a competitive advantage " it’s a way of life.

Like with Samsung, here too but on a much larger scale, the Internet has been used to create a seamless supply chain system that functions too smoothly as if the organisations in the chain were one entity.

GE Lighting has 55 machine part suppliers. Until recently, the requisitioning process from the plants was initiated electronically via the existing purchasing system.

Purchasing agents would review daily requests and initiate the price quoting process. The engineering drawings of the part and an electronic quote form were requested and the packages were prepared. Simply fulfilling a request for a quotation could take several days, and the division typically issued 100 to 150 requests a week. The company would then mail the completed requests to suppliers.

All of this changed with the Internet. GE has implemented the Trading Partners Network (TPN). With the induction of this system, GE Lighting allows suppliers to view requests on an extranet shortly after buyers in the worldwide sourcing division post them. Suppliers can then post blind bids using TPN.

Here’s how it works: plant personnel request parts using an ordering system. Once a day, those requisitions are extracted in a batch process that automatically matches them with the corresponding drawings stored in an optical jukebox. The drawings are automatically matched with codes for the parts and a request is posted on the network.

Suppliers who view these requests enter bids using ordinary Internet browsers.

The biggest advantage has been the leverage the system offers. GE realised this when it got a quote from a Hungarian supplier that underbid competition by 20 per cent. Earlier, the Hungarian could not have accessed GE’s order and hence, could not make a bid.

On an average, GE has managed to cut procurement cycles by half and processing costs by 30 per cent. More pertinently, suppliers have been forced to reduce prices due to on-line bidding.

Hilton Hotels
The Internet is helping Hilton Hotels Corporation redefine customer service. Logging on to Hilton.com reveals one of the fastest on-line reservation systems in the industry. On an average, it takes about two minutes.

Not just that, it offers any traveler hotel information and guided visual tours through Hilton hotels around the world. Frequent guests visiting the website can join the free HONORS reward program and enjoy varied benefits, including services automatically tailored to their preferences based on previous stays.

Meeting planners can access the website for group reservations, digital floor plans and the like.

Once in the hotel, travelers can use Hilton’s 24-hour business center with Internet access copiers, fax machines and more. Some hotels even offer life-size TeleSuite Networks to conduct meetings or celebrations with participants located anywhere in the world. On the cards are wireless Internet access, an interactive on-line service, formation and entertainment systems in all guest rooms.

The idea initially met with a generous dose of both " support and skepticism. Detractors were of the view that in a corporate environment, every investment should make a tangible difference to one's bottomline. There had to be a return on investment.

Supporters of the concept were, however, unfazed and reckoned that in the long run, they may have to give up their existing ways of doing business. If that meant changing their business model, then they might as well do it.

They argued that by going ahead with these plans, the chain would be able to target a higher percentage of the travelers’ business " 35 to 50 per cent. Achieving this was possible only when the hotel upped its brand image and experience with customers to a level they had never seen before.

Hilton started off by looking closely at business models on the Internet in every segment " consumers, business travelers, tourists, meeting planners, travel agents, etc., and drew definite blue prints on how to conduct e-commerce with them.

To start off with this exercise meant building huge repositories of information, infusing interactivity, a high degree of personalisation and most importantly, functionality.

As a spokesperson for Hilton says: "We want profiles on the customers, their history with us, what they like and don’t like, accessible no matter where they touch us in the world. The Web has allowed us to redefine the contacts and touch points, and the more information we have, the better we can do."

He adds that Hilton has the pieces of a "totally integrated customer environment," with very good profiles of its most frequent guests. But the information is not as good as they would ideally like when it comes to customers that stay only occasionally with Hilton. And these are precisely the areas where the potential for upside growth is enormous.

With the new system being built and put in place, it can accommodate not just a bigger database, but allow extremely fine segmentation of that information. From the hotel’s perspective, it helps them to reach out to their target audience more cost effectively and develop personal relationships.

However, the new business model for Hilton is an expensive venture, annually costing "seven figures" for the website alone. Getting more business from each customer demands catering to his very specific preferences in hotel rooms as well as food and other amenities, which is far more complex and costly to manage.

A key issue is balancing the trade-offs between such levels of service and their costs. The hotel spokesperson says: "We pull people into a room to display the impacts of marketing and service initiatives, and explain how to remove barriers to entry through technology or other solutions. To handle the complexity, we’ve increased the education and knowledge level of our people."