7 E-Business Basics

By Patricia Seybold

"All Business is E-Business," Christer Ljungdahl (one of "Patty's Visionaries"), reminds me almost every time we talk. Christer has been responsible for years for leading and evolving National Instruments' Internet strategy—for customers as well as employees and partners. NI's Internet strategy and evolving infrastructure have fostered tons of customer-led innovation, as hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers from thousands of disciplines share their epiphanies and their struggles, as kids and their mentors play with LEGO Mindstorms robots to spawn the next generation of sensor-savvy engineers, and as NI releases new intelligent plug and play products to help us make sense of and interact with the physical world. Christer's Internet strategy goes way beyond the basics that I described 12 years ago in Customers.com Classic. Yet he has clearly mastered all of the 7 basics that those early Internet Visionaries put in place.

Here's the second chapter of the revised Customers.com Handbook—designed to complement Customers.com Classic with a set of How To's and basic building blocks for anyone who wants to refresh their e-business strategy or is working on their mobile strategy. As we move on to (or back to) the future in social media and community, it's a good idea to make sure that you haven't neglected the basic customer-centric building blocks in crafting your outside-in, customer-centric (e-)business strategy.

How to Plan and Implement Your Customers.com® Strategy
A Handbook for Your Customers.com® Initiatives—Part 2
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO and Sr. Consultant, July 29, 2010