How to weave stronger Web sites

By CHARLES BELFORD

Thursday, August 15, 2002 – Page B12

Remember when your Web site was the responsibility of the information technology manager?

Twice a year, he or she would call around to the business units and ask if they wanted to put something up on the Web. Half of the units never returned the calls. Those that did drove the IT manager crazy with frequent change requests, whining about the Web-maintenance money coming out of their budgets and putting in requests for new Web-based capabilities.

When responsibility for the Web was transferred to the marketing department, the calls to the business units stopped altogether as the marketing gurus tried to figure out how to use this asset. Finally, different business units woke up to the fact that the Web could play an important role in advancing their objectives. Now they realized that they had a stake in the company's Web site.

Good news? Not initially.

In the worst-case scenario, you had a bunch of managers each clamouring for a healthy chunk of digital real estate or, worse, setting up their own business line's Web site. The result: The company site looked like a map of the Balkans in the 19th century. Lots of disparate groups competing for visitor attention. Common look and feel on the site? Not on your life. Mature navigation across all pages? Maybe next year.

Finding a remedy here is tricky, but before deciding how to proceed there has to be consensus on three fronts:

The Web site is a business asset and everybody has to be committed to the same set of expected business results, because these will be used to guide capital investment in this asset;

Whatever management framework is decided upon, it has to be responsive to all of the business lines;

Everyone concerned must have a say in the principles under which content will be organized. For example, will it be organized by product line, by business unit or by customer affinity group, such as home maker, teen and senior?

So, what management framework is best for governing the site?

The most popular governance option is the old reliable management committee. Here the duties of the committee include brokering the business units' requested changes to content, dinging their budgets for money to keep the site running and reporting annually on the extent to which expected business results were achieved.

Another governance option that has found favour is to load up an executive vice-president (often the CIO) with all the administrative responsibilities for Web support. This was the IT manager's responsibility before he or she threatened to quit and transferred Web responsibilities to marketing.

Finally, some outfits simply create another, horizontal, management charter for this asset and away they go.

Restructuring is the least attractive option for most organizations. In my experience, no classically organized company is going to permit something as incidental to their business (in management's mind) as the Web to become the driver of a major organizational transformation. While a few bricks and mortar companies spun off dot-com doppelgangers to handle their Internet-based businesses during the tech boom, many of these withered when the e-commerce music died.

As e-commerce and e-business emerges from the ashes, albeit very cautiously for most Canadian companies, when should a firm consider rethinking its management framework for its Web?

I think you've got to put the question on the agenda of your management retreat when the on-line portion of your business is delivering about 30 per cent of your revenue. And if it turns out that your Web business is producing the most growth potential for your company, then the question goes on the agenda as Item 1. Charles Belford is president of Management Smarts Inc., an Ottawa-based management consulting and training firm. cbelford@managementsmarts.com