A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

1 

Senior management. Managing the senior management team interface was mainly an 

issue for  less‑  evolved adopters of e‑commerce. Leading adopters mentioned it had been a 

Figure 10.3

The main challenges of managing  sell-  side e-commerce (n = 84)

Source: E-consultancy (2005).

1 Gaining senior

  management buy-

  in/resource

Strongly

agree [1]

32.14%

(27)

1

0

2

3

4

5

6

Partially

agree [2]

35.71%

(30)

Neither agree

nor disagree [3]

11.9%

(10)

Partially

disagree [4]

8.33%

(7)

Disagree [5]

11.9%

(10)

2 Gaining buy-

  in/resource from

 traditional marketing

  functions/brands

15.48%

(13)

39.29%

(33)

23.81%

(20)

10.71%

(9)

10.71%

(9)

3 Gaining IT

 resource/technical

  support

32.14%

(27)

36.9%

(31)

10.71%

(9)

11.9%

(10)

8.33%

(7)

4 Finding suitable

  staff

15.66%

(13)

44.58%

(37)

22.89%

(19)

13.25%

(11)

3.61%

(3)

5 Finding suitable

  digital media

  agencies

9.52%

(8)

26.19%

(22)

35.71%

(30)

15.48%

(13)

13.1%

(11)

6 Other (please

  enter challenge)

36.84%

(7)

15.79%

(3)

31.58%

(6)

10.53%

(2)

5.26%

(1)

25

50

75

100

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Chapter 10  Change management

problem, but they now felt they had achieved understanding of the strategic importance 

of online channels and this was matched by financial resources and sufficient input into 

planning to achieve alignment between business objectives and e‑commerce initiatives.

2 

Marketing, different brands, businesses or countries. Similarly, this was more of an issue 

for the  less‑  evolved organisations. Others had created processes for collaboration between 

e‑commerce and marketing teams and defined responsibilities for e‑commerce within 

these marketing teams.

3 

Information technology. This interface was mentioned as a challenge by nearly every 

respondent – there was a belief that insufficient resource for applications development was 

limiting the potential of e‑commerce to deliver value to customers and the organisation. 

Where this was less of an issue, companies had either incorporated some development 

function within the e‑commerce function, or had outsourced parts of development.

Smaller business and start‑up business face a different set of challenges in using digital 

technologies to make their business a success, particularly if their business is based on using 

digital technology to see their services only as a pureplay retailer of Software as a Service 

(SaaS) business, introduced in Chapter 3. Recently, the concept of