I. Evolving From a Products to Process-based Business:
1992: Online BookStore (OBS): Product Based
When AOL and her sister giants began their online bookstores, we moved on, inside the book to where the content lives.
- Selling things: books online = files online
- OBS adopted bookstore model before it was generic
1995: Open Book Systems (OBS): Process Based
Our biggest business challenge for tomorrow is to become obvious, ubiquitous, and invisible.
- Selling access to massively customized ideas and information
- OBS's core business today:
- Building custom internet/intranet online environments for companies
- The OBS pyramid business model - new ways to build breathing systems
II. Core Assumptions for Business Success on the Web
- Assume that clients and customers are online
- Assume increasing bandwidth
- Assume increased and easier multimedia capabilities
- Assume a larger customer base tomorrow
- Assume that you will have to make a new set of assumptions in Q2 97
III. Reach Your People
Start at Home: Immediate Intranet Applications of Your Web Site
- Develop a core team for working the web:
- Language matters: spend time talking
- Repurpose employees
- Repurpose contractors
- Repurpose clients: serve your clients by training them to use and customize your site
- Key jobs and who fills them:
- Concept Person: shape your own destiny
- Content Gatekeeper: what becomes public and when
- Webmaster: do-er or supervisor?
- Give people tools as well as rights and privileges to do their jobs online, to monitor their own success
- QStats
- Postman
IV. The Heart of the Pyramid: Digital Reincarnation
- Make the site serve you: repeated actions become software
- Automate as needed: build, license or buy your software
- Increasingly, "content" posted at web sites is software, not pictures to look at or text to read
- Utility above appearance: an information game is worth a thousand pictures
- If you can think it, and write clearly, there's someone on the Net who can program it for you
V. Parting Paradoxes to Think About Tomorrow
- Marketing: in a market of millions, personal emails are better traffic generators than direct mail spams
- Embrace the competition: have fun with frames
- Freedom works: orchestrate your site's use by employees and clients
- The publishing business is no longer limited to publishers
Copyright © 1997–2024 by Laura Fillmore; written permission required to reprint.
laura@obs.com