Successful penetration into the e-business: 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 e-business 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.