The Proposal of Process Model for Strategic Management in Electronic Commerce

The importance of e-commerce environment is still growing. Therefore, many research activities in this business field have been revealed. This business field offers many possibilities for the long-time success, but also many shortcomings. The most meaningful shortcoming, e.g. for the start-up e-company, is definitely highly competitive environment. This mentioned element could be reduced by creation and implementation of an effective and successful e-strategy with the help of strategic management process. The practice and research studies show that the importance of strategic process in e-commerce is deeply underestimated. Therefore, the main subject of this paper is to analyse the existing possibilities of individual views on definition and creation of strategy and its processes in e-commerce. Based on the studies of available resources, the key element and principles leading to an effective strategy in e-commerce are created. It is also characterized by the strategic management process that optimizes the function of a successful e-strategy. The main aim of this paper is based on critical analysis of current approaches that leads to the creation and implementation of a successful strategy for electronic commerce and creation an effective process model for strategic management in e-commerce. The main methods used in this paper is an analysis and synthesis of current situation about strategy and e-commerce environment, modelling of process model for strategic management in e-commerce and case study that gives information about the selected e-company and compares the theoretical process model with the real strategic processes in e-commerce. The creation of the process model is based on literature review about the issue examined, especially the theory about the e-strategy and other process strategic model and the observation of the current e-commerce environment. The theoretically created process model is suitable for developing new research theories in the issued examined and for making effective strategic decisions in practice. This model could be used for reducing the shortcomings that e-companies during the strategic process usually make. The practical part of this paper focuses on the application of this process model in practice with the help of case study. This case study focuses on the analysis of contemporary strategic management of the selected e-company. Based on personal interviews with managers of this e-company and observation of its activities in e-commerce environment, the strategic process model for this selected e-company is proposed (respecting the main principles of theoretically created process model). At the same time the main shortcomings in the strategic process of the selected company are defined and recommendations for its elimination are suggested. The results of the paper show that the created process model of strategic management in e-commerce is valid and usable in theory and practise and can offer the effective way to the creation and implementation of a successful e-strategy.