Successful Penetration into the e-Business Environment: An Empirical Study

The purpose of this research is to better understand reseller/integrator organizations in the IT distribution channel and some of the factors that may impact their ability to move into and successfully operate within the ebusiness marketspace. Reseller organizations have had a strong motivation for moving into the e-business space due to dramatically declining margins. In this study, a survey was conducted for 25 reseller/integrator organizations, yielding a response rate of 70%, assessing viability for moving into the e-business space. A survey instrument was created, tested, modified, and administered with 22 quantitative and 15 qualitative items. The mean annual revenue for the organizations surveyed was $346 million with an average of 437 employees with an average e-business sale of 1⁄4 million dollars. Likert scales were employed to assess customer orientation, relationship management, and technical staff concerns. End-user organizations’ e-business capabilities appeared to be considerably lower than expected contributing to the perceived opportunities to penetrate the e-business market. Reseller organizations are at the initial phases of being able to provide value-added services to their customer base. While developing relationships with firms that have needed expertise in order to successfully deliver e-business projects, reseller firms were hesitant to create acquisition strategies but rather focused on building partnerships and alliances for e-business projects. Respondent organizations had difficulty focusing on how to acquire and retain technical e-business resources to accomplish projects. Outsourcing and prime contract were considered to be critical in the overall success equation for reseller organizations. Managerial implications from this study included focusing on a unique set of differentiated e-business service offerings, selling e-business projects to the executive level of the organization, and creating a methodology to manage projects as the prime contractor. 0-7695-1874-5/