Aim: To study E business change management.

Theory: The four different types of organizational change identified by Nadler are: 1. Tuning: This is an incremental form of change when there is no immediate need for change. It can be categorized as doing things better. New procedures or policies may be used to improve process efficiency, e.g. to reduce time to market or reduce cost of doing business. E-business involves tuning as Internet technologies are applied to improve efficiencies. 2. Adaptation: Also an incremental form of change, but in this case it is in response to an external threat or opportunity. It can also be categorized as doing things better. For example, a competitor may introduce a new product or there may be merger between two rivals. A response is required, but it does not involve a significant change in the basis of competition. Managing E-business related change also requires adaptation. 3. Re-orientation: A significant change or transformation to the organization due to discontinuous change. There is not an immediate need of change, but the change is an anticipation change. When IBM was one of the first organizations to introduce the concept of e-business in mid 1990s, this was a re-orientation in the way it delivered its services which helped to spark wider change in the way business worked. Successful adoption of e-business also requires reorientation for many organizations. 4. Re-creation: In re-creation, the senior management team of an organization decides that a fundamental change to the way it operates is required to compete effectively. In the air line industry, established airlines have had to establish change programmes to respond to the low cost carriers, for example by emphasizing service quality or introducing rival low-cost services. Both re-orientation and re-creation can be categorized as doing things differently. E-business has also caused re-creation in the airline industry, with the low-cost airlines now gaining more than 90% bookings online. With competition becoming tougher every quarter, companies are starting to experiment with a series of interlinked technologies that allow them to optimize their business processes and to react quickly when market conditions change. These technologies are collectively known as business process management (BPM). They include tools for business process modeling, workflow management, process monitoring, enterprise application integration and managing organizational change, all of which greatly help information to flow through organizations by coordinating and sometimes supplementing companies key enterprise software packages, such as application suites supplied by SAP, Oracle and Siebel. BPM has obvious advantages. Remodel led processes are usually more effective than their predecessors, generating immediate cost savings and competitive advantages. MSB International, an agency supplying workers on temporary contracts to companies, used BPM tools from Meta storm to revamp its contract processing. Previously, each new contract took an hour of a salespersons time to process after it was agreed. Now the work takes five minutes and is far less prone to error.

Rob Marston, infrastructure manager at MSB, says the business benefit is astounding. The software cost Euro 50,000 and generated a return of Euro 100,000 within a year by making sales people more effective, he says. Just as importantly, BPM can help businesses change processes more quickly, perhaps with only minor changes to workflow rules, which minimizes maintenance costs. Hardly a week goes by when we dont change our business processes says Mr. Marston. The board recently changed some authorization procedures, and that took about ten minutes to implement. It sounds small, but in the old days, that would have taken a week. BPM can help align IT infrastructures more closely with business needs. It helps to break down the traditional barriers between business way of describing a process and the IT way of implementing the process. Change management is conducted by change agents who are the managers responsible for controlling change. In the context of e-business , the change agent could be project manager responsible for implementing a new information system. Change model proposed by Jay and Smith identifies four phases. 1. Initial orientation: In the orientation phase, it is necessary that there be a clear understanding of the reasons for bringing about the change. A change strategy must be developed. A skilled change team should be established and committed change sponsors should be identified. 2. Preparation: The preparation phase will involve an analysis of the environment within which the change is to take place. This includes an identification of the critical success factors for change along with a threat analysis. A work plan for the change process must be developed that includes detailed task and timings. 3. Change implementation: Changes are implemented by piloting the change, introducing the new procedures, conducting training and finally rolling out the change. 4. A supportive phase: In the final phase changes must be stabilized.

Conclusion: Change management in e-business has been studied.