Malaysian Dotcoms must re-engineer core business

According to IBM Malaysia's CEO, putting the dot in a dotcom requires more than a Web page but significant business restructuring.

PETALING JAYA (Asia Pulse) - A failure to re-engineer core business was responsible for the 80% failure rate of new dotcom businesses in Malaysia, according to IBM Malaysia chief executive officer Voon Seng Chuan.

He said that companies had been going into e-business by simply launching websites or homepages without significant restructuring in the existing company. E-business transformation should start off with the reengineering of the core business processes of a company, he stressed.

"E-business transformation is actually the ability of companies to re-engineer their core business processes by leveraging the power of Internet and the world wide web (www)," Voon told participants of IBM e-Infrastructure: Technology Driving e-business conference, here Wednesday. Voon said that IBM e-business cycle for companies comprised able on the Internet. of four elements, namely the transformation of core business processes; building new applications; running e-business transactions in a scalable, available and safe environment; and leverage the knowledge and information avail

Having followed these four-element e-business chain, he said IBM e-business transformation had so far produced good results for IBM. "Our sales via the web had increased from US$3.3 billion (RM12.54 billion) in 1998 to US$15 billion (RM57 billion) last year, service transactions via Internet rose from 14 million to 40 million, and the number of business partners increased from 7,000 to 13,000," he said. These figures were sourced from the International Data Corporation.

In Malaysia, Voon said IBM had played a leading role in generating greater interest among local companies on e-business, namely through the distribution of its e-business-enabled solutions. He said that company had worked hard in the last six months to help its Malaysian customers in e-business.