[London, ENGLAND] Many large European companies are
rushing headlong into e-business projects without proper
justification, American Management Systems
(AMS)
warned in a report published Wednesday.
AMS, an international business and IT consultancy, interviewed
131 senior managers in European companies and found most of
them were disappointed with the outcome of their e-business
initiatives. Just 14 percent judged their projects to have been
“very successful.”
Nick Rowley, vice president of AMS in Europe, said companies
were spending millions of euros to establish themselves
online, yet there was no careful planning or any application
of the metrics normally applied to offline projects of similar
value.
“Aggressive marketing from e-business vendors, general market
hype and shareholder pressure are all forcing the pace,” said
Rowley.
The AMS research was conducted among companies operating in
manufacturing, banking, consumer and business services
organizations in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain,
Benelux and Scandinavia.
Amazingly, one of the chief weaknesses of the European approach
to e-business is the failure to measure the results of
their projects. Less than one manager in five was able to
confirm that results were being properly measured.
Nor are European managers always inclined to prepare a full
business case before investing in an e-business project. In
fact, 49 percent admitted they did not prepare a case, while
of those who did, only 50 percent used any objective
measurement to show how a project’s outcome stacked up
against the time, staffing and resources put into it.
Usually, the high expectations riding on investment in
new technology cause problems when the outcome fails to
fulfil them. This may not hold true in European
e-business, however, as AMP points out that 11 percent
of managers were not expecting any return whatsoever.
The survey confirms what other observers have long
thought — that many of the efforts of bricks and
mortar companies to put their businesses online are
doomed to failure. What is astonishing, however, is
that some of them do not even seem to mind.
Readers can access the full report on the AMS Web site.
