Measures for e-business value assessment

Companies are investing heavily to leverage the Internet and transform their traditional businesses into e-businesses. Senior managers are increasingly under pressure to justify e-business costs. Do these investments pay off? And if so, how can a company make sure they keep paying off? Managers in successful companies struggle to articulate where benefits come from, and those without success strive to find a way to turn things around and cash in on e-business initiatives. We previously discussed results from an extensive survey about how eight key drivers affect a company's e-business success. Researchers from the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce at the McCombs School of Business, the University of Texas at Austin, conducted the survey to assess e-business value in small, medium, and large companies across the US and Europe. The study identified critical links between e-business drivers, operational excellence measures, and financial success measures. We describe these links in detail, showing that e-business initiatives improve operational excellence, which in turn improves financial performance.