Evolution of Electronic Catalogs to Customer Process Portals ) A Structured Approach at ETA S.A

First-generation E-commerce applications, such as corporate web sites or electronic catalogs have often been developed from a technological or marketing perspective. Technological features do not fit the customer’s requirements or marketing does not conceive E-commerce as part of their customer relationship program. Disappointing transaction figures or business cases for E-commerce are the most common result. We argue that process thinking needs to be introduced in Evolution of Electronic Catalogs to Customer Process Portals – A Structured Approach... 193 E-commerce projects in order to match customer and internal processes. A structured approach to identify and decompose customer processes in portal elements has been developed together with ETA SA, a subsidiary of ‘The Swatch Group’. In this process ETA’s existing E-commerce system will evolve to become a customer process portal.