Internet Business and Communication Strategy (IBCS) is a strategic plan

• to meet business and marketing goals by means of the WWW public information service in the Internet environment

• to communicate a consistent and reliable corporate message to organizations and individuals situated in the client´s field of interest

• to build an effective online marketing channel for providing personalized information services leading to long-term business relationships

IBCS projects are based on corporate information and marketing strategy and represent an important milestone in building complex public relations. They are developed after an analysis of a customer´s information needs (current and potential) and an analysis of a company´s own information needs (of both managers and employees). Projects consider the relations between the internal information system (mainly its marketing subsystem) and the information which needs to be released to customers or to the general public. In the case of E-commerce, the design and building of Intranets – security and legal aspects have to be taken into account and the issue of strict organizational rules for public information services is necessary. IBCS projects must have outputs clearly defined in advance before work on the projects can begin.

IBCS will produce a number of specific (sub)projects and a selection from these will be implemented. The methodology developed through the cooperation between the Information Management Forum at the Technical University of Brno and DirectNet provides the following examples of subprojects to be implemented:

Interactive services design

Interactive service is the key to a successful WWW service. Its design consists of targets and benefits definition, functions description, relations to other corporate systems (databases), data structure and entry forms design. Our experience proves the importance of clearly defining the interface to the marketing information system and to its data model.

Hypermedia structure / model and objects description

Hypermedia objects include WWW documents (static or dynamically generated), graphic objects (logos, photographs etc.) and other multimedia elements (VRML scenes, video or audio sequences). The output must be an unambiguously defined model (independent on HW/SW/DB platform or other technology) for the supplier of the WWW service.

Visual style and design

Represents principles for each WWW documents design – navigating elements, header and footer shape, color patterns used etc.

Text / graphic content creation

It is not always possible to utilize text from materials prepared for printed (or some other type of) company presentation. A large part of the text to be used has to be created on the basis of work carried out within the IBCS project and further refined by forming seminars.

Organizational and operating rules

• a clearly defined distribution of responsibilities between the Dpt. of Marketing and Informatics

• the provision (if possible) of immediate feedback for visitors / customers

• prompt notification of changes of workplace descriptions

• a statement of user access rights (see Security framework)

Promotion of the Internet

• inserting WWW service into appropriate directories and search facilities

• definition of linkage policy

• advertisement space analysis and selection

• ad design and development

• WWW service promotion outside the Internet

Feedback analysis

This will quantify the measurable effects of the WWW service including ways of analyzing attendance, data structure design for measured data and the consequences of utilizing the results (relations to other marketing data received from non-Internet resources must be considered).

Training

Recommended mostly for the management, Marketing Dpt., dealers or employees of each department in the organisation responsible for updating information.

Security framework

The key tasks for online transaction security are to

• provide for confidential transmission

• authenticate the parties involved

• ensure the integrity of order data and payment instructions for goods and services

This section not only includes the technical aspects of security but also defines access levels for each information product and organizational rules for their usage.