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Companies are reshaping how they view and use technology. Lou Gerstner wants IBM to set the agenda.
IBM, once the master of the glass house, now wants to be the facilitator of electronic business. The company is shifting billions of dollars in resources and tens of thousands of employees in an effort to tie its customers more closely to their own customers and partners under the E-business rubric of IBM hardware, software, and services. IBM's goal is not only to change the way people think about IBM; it wants them to think differently about their own businesses.
Will customers come along for the ride?
IBM chairman Lou Gerstner certainly thinks so. In an exclusive interview with InformationWeek last week, Gerstner said the company is taking steps to help customers adapt to the strategic, organizational, and cultural changes mandated by the rise of electronic business. "E-business moves the agenda of the IT industry back into the CEO's office," says Gerstner. "The new mantra is growth-globalization, cycle times, speed, and competitiveness. What we keep saying to our customers is that E-business is not a technological change. It's a fundamental change in the way business will be done in their industries- aided, abetted, supported, and enabled by technology"
So far, the strategy is yielding dividends for customers. Woolworth Co., for example, uses IBM's E-business technology-everything from Lotus Domino to a merchandising planning suite-to improve its supply chain. "We now operate in 12 countries and needed a system that was very flexible and reactive and able to aggregate up for a corporate view in a consistent manner for more than 7,000 stores in constant currency," says Thomas Beauchamp, VP of IS at Woolworth.
Adds Randal Langdon, director of interactive sales technologies at Merrill Lynch & Co., which uses IBM technology to give customers access to research and account information: "E-business is critical to where we are going, because in the final analysis, it will strengthen our connection with clients."
IBM is realizing some of the benefits, too. The company says that last year it sold 100,000 network computers, the thin clients that are the end-user interfaces to IBM's E-business software and service offerings, and has several major contracts in the works. In the fourth quarter of last year,...