The author reveals the new face of IT-enabled competitiveness in the early 21st century. Information technology had provided important competitive advantage, such as distribution channels. This technology not only changes the way we live, but also provide a more efficient way to do business. The competitive impact of these technologies is global. Especially, the Internet has offered globalizing operational efficiencies and service reach coordination to occur as never before. One important element in considering the context of this book is to explore changes that occur over time. Organizations and environments are not static but dynamic and the influence of this dynamic context, in particular on the use and evaluation of an implemented global customer service system, is important. To cope up with these growing and complex requirements, enterprises of tomorrow need new types of specialized tools and advanced services and new advanced approaches to support their business activities. The technologies can be leveraged to create intelligent enterprises" which will not only provide better-focused and customized services to customers, but also, create business efficiency for building relationships with suppliers and other business partners on long term basis. As organizations of the 21st century explore new markets, new services and new products in response to forces such as advances in information and communication technologies, business strategies such as mass customization, globalization and shorter production cycles; need to offer high demand of services and have to increase revenue and productivity through reduced expenditures and a better level of service with fewer resources.
– Dr. Mahesh S. Raisinghani, is a Program Director of eBusiness and a faculty member at the Graduate School of Management, University of Dallas