Before considering any specific processes that might be affected by the Internet or the Web, let's take a broad view of the business environment in which companies now find themselves. Some customers, although by no means all customers, are using the Web to seek information about products, to buy products, and to request service support. Although these Web-oriented customers are still a minority in almost all areas, they are often the wealthiest and the most sophisticated customers. And their numbers are growing rapidly. Similarly, some companies that buy or sell products are relying on the Internet or the Web to facilitate the distribution of information, to handle orders, and even, in some cases, to deliver the products that other companies seek to buy or sell.

To make matters more complex, new companies are being founded to do business with these new Web-oriented customers and suppliers. Moreover, the current financial market is such that these new companies are able to find lots of startup money and, with luck, go public rapidly and have access to even larger amounts of money via the stock market.

Figure 3.4 provides an overview of the situation we are describing. Each company must consider its own business environment very carefully to determine what its customers are doing or are likely to do in the near future. Are your company's customers likely to buy over the Web? You must also consider what your competitors or new e-business startups might do. This is especially...