Increase Online Sales :: Where To Put the eTeam Within Your Organization

As more and more companies tackle ecommerce in hopes of increasing online sales and increasing offline sales, many are finding it difficult to appropriately place their "eTeams" within their organizations.  This is becoming a particularly crucial because there is a tremendous amount of evidence showing that people will research their purchases online before going to the store and purchasing offline.

Jim Okamura, senior partner at consulting firm J.C. Williams Group Ltd. has been studying organizational issues directly connected with e-commerce.  He says that e-commerce is getting a lot more C-suite visibility as the head of direct-to-consumer marketing is more frequently a member of a corporations senior management team.  But still, even with that trend seeming to be firmly in place with more and more companies, a join survey by Forrester Research and Shop.org, conducted last year, show that where the eteam might land is still anyones guess.  Here's the results:

• 34% of retailers with stores and e-commerce operations organized online as a seperate division
• 26% put web and catalog in a single unit
• 26% put web, catalog and stores in a single unit
• 14% had some other structure

The trend in most places seems to be towards a partially integrated structure where all the merchandising folks are together, regardless of whether they're online or offline and all the advertising/pr people are together, regardless of which channel they're responsible for.

This is a step in the right direction because organizations that stay completely segregated often run in to problems.  Take Home Depot for example.  For a long time, they kept online and offline channel employees and their teams seperate.  The online team thought they could increase online sales by selling bedding; problem was, the brick-and-mortar store doesn't sell it, nor are they interested in carrying it.  Customer got confused about what to expect from Home Depot.  When they moved to a partially integrated structure, they worked together to determine what would benefit both channels, while keeping the message to the customer consistent.

Wal-Mart is another great example.  The retail giant has pulled together teams from the two channels to unviel some pretty great stuff in this last year.  "Ship to Site" is a great program that allows customers to have inventory they find online shipped directly to a nearby physical location for pickup.  "Find in Store" is another great initiative that lets customers browse actual store inventory before driving there to look for the item.  These ideas all blossomed from bring both sides together. 

But, for all the success stories, there are times when it just doesn't work to bring online and offline teams together.  Take Circuit City who changed their structure so their online team would report to an executive that was also responsible for brick-and-mortar stores.  The end result was actually a noticable slow-down in online growth, and a weakening of the e-commerce leadership structure.  Why?  Because the executive in charge was stretched far too thin to do it all.  Not only that, knowing the ins and outs of a store is not the same as being an expert at online retailing. 

My take is this: you need to put your eTeams where they best fit for your organization.  And you need to be flexible with your timeframe.  When you make a structural change, it always takes time to iron out the kinks; think about it almost like a merger between two companies.  The changes and shifting of personnel and responsibilities needs to happen slowly and deliberately, always making sure the first change works before moving on to the next.