E-Business Case Study

Proposal:

Our proposal for the final project is an e-business case study following American Hotel Register Company and their e-business strategy. American Hotel Register is 150 year old company and one of the oldest companies in Illinois; it is also the largest distributor of hospitality supplies in the world and provides the majority of hotel supplies to hotels in North and Central America. Over the past fifteen years American Hotel has had to make many changes to their e-business strategy to accommodate acquisitions, such as their global acquisition of Intros Hotel Supplies, and changes in the marketplace.

For this case study our team will focus on strategies revolving around the transformation of American Hotel's brick and mortar catalog business strategy and their move to e-commerce along with the discussion of future changes in to their ever-evolving e-business strategy for their e-commerce platform. Each team member will be responsible for at least one section of the case study in which they will discuss one of the following sections described below based on interviews with company employees, industry analysis, background research and e-commerce site analysis. The sections to be discussed are as follows:

• The first section will discuss the various e-business models used at American Hotel and how these various e-business models evolved and changed over the years this will include the sources of revenues, research on competitors, competitive positioning, value propositions, internet technologies used for competitive advantages and how they align their online and offline strategies.

• The second section will discuss the ownership of the e-business strategies used at American Hotel; this will include American Hotel's definition of e-business, groups and departments responsible, champions, integration in corporate strategies, planning processes and digital strategies.

• The third section will discuss the organizational models that were developed at American Hotel Register to support digital strategy development; this section will include the challenges and advantages of the models, roles in e-commerce projects and organizational changes to support the rapid and iterative strategy formulation.

• The fourth section will discuss the project development and implementation approach of the e-commerce projects which will include the discussion of resources (both internal and professional services), skills, talents, obstacles and deficiencies that occurred in the projects development cycle. In addition we will discuss the will discuss project management and the systems implementation as well as the strategies that were used in human resources development.

• The fifth section will discuss the technical architecture used in American Hotel's e-commerce environment and the technical strategies used to support the digital strategies. In addition this will include the support strategies and services as well as interviews on the experience of integrating the components of the architecture.

• In the final section we will discuss the transformation strategies used after and during the implementation; this will include strategies on emotional intelligence, cultural change, training and the discussion of alternative approaches and models.

• Also include Industry Scan. You will need to understand what is currently happening in the industry in which your company works. Most likely it is the hotel/hospitality industry but you should determine that in order to understand what your competitors are doing.