Are companies exploiting the Internet and other
technologies for their customer and supplier relationships?
We found that companies have made significantly
more progress orienting their IT
applications to customers than to suppliers, but both
areas need improvement.Customer orientation measures
the extent to which online applications are oriented
toward
• providing information to customers, and
• allowing transactional features for customers to
place and manage orders online.
Informational customer orientation measures the
extent to which online applications provide customers
with product information, customer service, ordering
services, and customization. Transactional customer
orientation concerns whether companies provide a
secure Web site where customers can submit or modify
orders, learn about order status, and make payments.
Informational customer orientation. Companies
can exploit the Internet to enhance customer experiences.
Although many companies have sufficiently
invested in providing various levels of online customer
services,they still can’t personalize content and orders.
Overall, companies that have observed increases in
financial measures such as revenue per employee have
higher customer orientation levels than companies
with no observed increase in financial performance.
Table 2 makes this clear.
Many companies (69 percent) provide productrelated
information (for example, catalog, product
description, specifications, and price) online, whereas
only 49 percent provide some online capabilities to
customize orders. However, just 33 percent of companies
that have not observed any increase in revenue
per employee allow online customization of orders,
compared with 64 percent of companies that have
observed financial gains.Furthermore,approximately
66 percent of companies cannot personalize content
(for example,order history and order status) when customers
log onto company Web sites.Even worse,about
73 percent of the companies with no observed revenue
per employee do not personalize content.
Approximately 72 percent of companies do not exploit
the benefits of online forums and virtual communities
to enhance stickiness—a characteristic that encourages
visitors to stay at or return to a Web site—and
information exchange. Surprisingly, about 48 percent