•You will hear five people talking about e-business in different areas.•For eac

M: It’s already made a huge impact and by the time the project’s fully implemented, we’ll have networked  over  300,000  employees  and suppliers—they’ll all be able to communicate through email. And it’s this interconnectivity, it’s changing everything about the way we work. I mean, last year around 15 percent of our in-service staff development was carried out through Web-based distance learning using the company intranet.  And  we reckon  that for every 1, 000 days of classroom-based teaching that’s  supplied  by  distance  learning,  it generates about ＄500, 000 in efficiency gains. And this year we’ll be delivering up to 30 percent of our courses by distance learning. So we’ll be looking at savings of over  $100 million.
F: We’re one of the largest insurance organizations in Canada, offering a wide range of financial products. We rely on a system of independent agents to distribute our products so it’s really important to maintain a close relationship with them. This used to bo done over the telephone but that was all very time-consuming for our employees and meant we could only supply agents with information during office hours. Now we have the extranet, which means that all our representatives can keep in touch around the clock and get the latest information about offerings.
F : We’re one of the Netherland’s leading hanks with 1, 300 branches here and abroad. We deal with both businesses and consumers but our primary focus  is  small  and  medium-sized businesses-SMBs as we call them. As part of our offering to SMBs, we recently launched a Web-based euro project which provides free briefings to both customers and staff about the new European currency.  Since  the  issues surrounding  the  euro  will  constantly  be changing, people will need regular updating. By providing up-to-the-minute bulletins, we’re establishing ourselves as a major player in the Eurozone countries.  This is enhancing our clients’ perceptions of us and strengthening our customer base.
M: We are one of France’s most prestigious bicycle manufacturers, selling mainly to professionals and people with a real passion for cycling as a sport. The best bit about our new website is that it lets customers actually design their own personalized cyber cycle. All they have to do is to choose s basic model and then decide what frame, wheels, color they want and pay on-line by credit card and the bike is delivered to their nearest dealer. With the new way of using the internet,  we have been able to create an international presence at a fraction of what it would  have  cost to advertise outside the domestic market.
F: After recent restructuring we felt we needed to change the company culture to reflect our leaner structure.  Processes that used to be highly bureaucratized needed to be simplified. One area  we  really had to tackle was procurement. After filling in massive amounts of paperwork, getting requisite signatures and then faxing orders off, our employees sometimes had to wait over a month for things like office material and PCs to get here. A real advantage with the new system is there’s less margin for error because if the form isn’t filled in  correctly, then the system  says  se immediately. So less time will bo wasted on sorting our problems. By the end of the year, we’ll have reduced our paper invoices from five million to aero.