FT-IT and FT Telecoms - Complete forward schedule

Here are synopses for the next few months, and summaries of later issues of the FT-IT Review and FT Telecoms, with an updated list of contributors and correspondents. Please note: this is the only document we release which gives writers' names, where they have been decided.

The FT-IT Review and the FT Telecoms supplements are published on a regular twice-a-month format, appearing on the first and third Wednesday of each month. FT-IT takes up three of every four slots. FT Telecoms will take up the fourth slot (i.e. the third Wednesday of alternate months).

NB: The inclusion of an article in the synopsis does not necessarily guarantee the article will appear in the newspaper, because of occasional space constraints. The associated web sites, www.ft.com/ftit and www.ft.com/fttelecoms, are published on the same day as the newspaper version and carry the full list.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Background information and suggestions for articles or themes that have not yet been assigned to individual writers should be sent, by e-mail only please, to itsurveys@ft.com where they will be considered by Andrew Baxter, FT-IT editor. Please do not use individual e-mail addresses, fax numbers or post.

Once articles have been assigned, please send information directly to the writers concerned, but PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU SEND - SPAM IS AN IRRITATION. All the writers are on e-mail, please see list of freelance writers at the end. (FT staff writers are all on firstname.surname@ft.com) Information should arrive six weeks ahead of publication.

PICTURES, ILLUSTRATIONS:
Pictures, illustrations and charts can also be sent to itsurveys@ft.com - as JPEGs, PDFs etc.

FT IT - June 5 2002

Main theme: old economy companies on the internet

1. Overview
It has taken a long time coming, but the B2C dinosaurs of the old economy are flexing their marketing and selling muscles on the internet. In the early days of the new medium, many seemed dazzled by the arrogance of the dotcoms and unsure what their response should be. Over the past two years, however, the business environment and competitive balance between old economy and pure play companies on the internet has changed beyond recognition. Many of the upstart B2C players were swept away after the tech stock collapse of early 2000, and others have fallen into the arms of old economy companies. In today's more favourable competitive environment, traditional companies do not feel pressured by the demands of "internet time" to rush their online business strategies, and can develop their plans in more normal time frames. This is not to say that it is all plain sailing for traditional companies as they hone their "clicks and mortar" strategies: there is still confusion over whether online operations should be run as separate entities which must be "profitable" in their own right or integrated into the main business, contributing to its development in ways that go beyond pure sales. Many companies have now accepted that this latter, more sophisticated approach makes more sense. There are technology issues to address, and - perhaps the most difficult problem - uncertainty over future usage levels by customers. This makes it hard to decide how much money and resources should be invested. Annie Counsell

2. Vultures Inc
The collapse of many pureplay dotcoms in 2000 created opportunities for many old-economy companies whose reticence about taking the plunge on the internet was matched by strong balance sheets. Entire websites, or the innovative, purpose-built technology driving them, were snapped up for bargain prices by a variety of companies such as GUS and John Lewis in the UK. Here we reprise the major such opportunistic deals on a global basis, and look at what the new owners did with their knock-down purchases. Michael Dempsey

3. Technology issues
In the early days of the internet one of the reasons - or in some cases, excuses - for a less than wholehearted adoption of e-commerce by old economy companies was the difficulty of hooking up their back-end legacy IT systems with the new online front-ends. These days, however, such excuses really won't wash - there are plenty of technology solutions available, some of which may be complex and/or costly, but they do work. Here we survey the options available, including enterprise application integration (EAI) software, and look at how web services can help. Nuala Moran

4. Technology choices
Big, old economy companies - especially those with large, multi-national or multilingual websites, are a tempting opportunity for IT vendors, but which of the cats will get the cream? Do large companies prefer dealing with household-name vendors, or is there a place for smaller suppliers with niche or domain expertise? Do large companies prefer to outsource or to keep it all in-house? And what opportunities are there for clicks-and-mortar companies which have developed their own internet technology to sell it to similar companies in other regions (Tesco Online being one example of such a vendor)? Mark Vernon

5. Website design issues
One of the biggest lessons learnt by late entrants into the e-commerce market was to keep their websites simple and avoid the plethora of flash animations and media-rich content loved by many web design consultancies and their once high-flying dotcom clients. In fact, the design philosophies behind the websites of many traditional retailers seems to be starkly utilitarian, while matching the overall look and colour schemes of their offline outlets. How much influence do website design consultancies have with these traditional companies, which like to think they know a thing or to about marketing and product display? George Cole

6. Interview
Michael Porter, the guru of competitiveness, believes that many of the pioneers of internet business, both dotcoms and established companies, have competed in ways that violate nearly every precept of good strategy. The new economy appears less like a new economy than an old economy that has access to new technology, he says. In many cases, the internet complements, rather than cannibalises, companies' traditional activities and ways of competing. While a new way of conducting business has become available, the fundamentals of competition remain unchanged. Rod Newing

Case studies*

7. Bay area supermarkets
While Tesco has been successful in the UK in implementing an Internet-based grocery shopping system, supermarkets - both old economy and dotcom varieties - in the world's most web-savvy area - The Bay Area - have failed so far to attract online customers. But now old economy supermarkets, Safeway and Albertson's are battling it out for Bay Area online customers. Earlier this year, both companies officially launched e-shopping web sites, and both are trying to claim Web turf formerly - and ultimately unsuccessfully - occupied by pureplay internet grocers Webvan and Peapod. Will Albertson's and Safeway - the nation's number two and three supermarket retailers, respectively succeed where dotcom companies failed? Chloe Veltman

8. John Lewis
The UK food and department store group was relatively late on the internet - its Waitrose food supermarket chain, for example, began by offering a limited online service for pickup from workplace car parks only, and in early 2000 was convinced that the economics of home delivery did not stack up. Later that year, however, it started a home delivery service, and now both it and its parent have fully-functioning online selling operations. Last year, JL bought the UK operations of Buy.com, the Californian technology product e-tailer, to strengthen its internet operation, but later it decided to close Buy.com and fold it into johnlewis.com. Here we unravel the company's evolving internet strategy. Fiona Harvey

9. Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook started looking at the web in 1996 and saw it would pose a real threat to its business if it didn't embrace it, so did so much earlier than many bricks and mortar businesses. Since then, the company has adopted some classical online tactics, regularly using viral email marketing promotions to boost visitor and register user numbers. The company is also on interactive TV platforms and on WAP, so in many ways can be considered one of the more enthusiastic old economy companies in terms of embracing the web. David Murphy

10. Photographic companies
Old economy photography companies such as Kodak and Fuji have, over the past few years, had to react to the emergence of digital cameras, which threaten their traditional analogue film business, and to the emergence of the web. As it has transpired, the coincidence of these two factors has enabled them to counter the loss of sales of film by offering online photographic services so that consumers can easily order prints of their digital images. In 2000, for example, Kodak invested $700m in a raft of new online services. How successful are these online printing ventures proving to be? David Murphy

11. UK clothing retailers
After some reticence in the early years of the internet, the traditional catalogue clothing and homeware companies such as Grattan, J.D. Williams and Littlewoods, along with newer catalogue companies such as Boden and High Street retailers such as Next have all established sophisticated websites. According to Next's most recent annual report, sales through the internet increased by 102 per cent in 2001/02 and accounted for 11 per cent of home shopping sales, or £40m (the company has a big catalogue operation). Over the past year it has extended its internet services, and customers can now manage their account and make payments online. In the current year, the internet has accounted for 14 per cent of home shopping sales. Among the older catalogue operators, J.D.Williams stands out in the internet world for having made the site profitable within a year, through careful planning and rigorous cost control. Paul Talacko

12. Argos
Internet aficionados with long memories will remember Argos as one of the unfortunate companies to get a price wrong on its website, forcing it to honour customers' orders at a loss. After this early goof, however, the company has developed into one of the most successful multi-channel operation in the UK at present. A look at how this strategy has emerged. Penelope Ody

13. Monster/TMP
Monster.com is the world's largest online careers network, and is the online arm of parent company TMP, a recruitment advertising agency. TMP is very much old economy, established in 1967 and now the largest recruitment advertising company in the world with 11,000 employees in 32 countries. The "Monster Board" was founded in 1994, acquired by TMP in 1999, and has become increasingly profitable, clinching deals with AOL and acquiring competitors such as Jobline. Monster has grown to become the flagship brand of TMP and is now its main revenue driver. In a sign of the changed times, however, Monster is now dropping the "dotcom" in its name and being brought back within the main TMP fold, where the brand is being developed to become "Monster, the leading careers network." Alan Stewart 14. European banks
It is crunch time for many European banks' online operations. In banks from Spain to Germany, separate online operations have not worked, and these are now being folded back into their parent companies. But there are some success stories, notably in the Nordic coutries, and the UK remains a centre of online banking innovation. Geoffrey Nairn

15. Bertelsmann and books
Bertelsmann spent millions to launch BOL, a B2C website aimed largely at competing against newcomer amazon.com, only to integrate this unit back into its bricks and mortar business. The German company took the view mid-way into the venture that the internet was nothing more than a new channel, to complement existing store, catalogue and hotline channels. That realisation irked some managers in the company, especially among the younger crew that wanted to push the company into new business areas. And it also led to some (more) internal restructuring. But most analysts agree it was the best way to proceed. John Blau

16. German retailers/mail order companies
Germany is home to a number of big retail companies, including the mail-order companies Otto Versand and Quelle. Quelle also owns the huge retail department store chain, Karstadt. Cash & carry giant Metro is another key player in the market. All of these companies, with the exception of karstadt, were late out of the blocks with B2C strategies. And they are still moving slowly, in the eyes of many analysts. Karstadt, which was one of the first department stores in Germany to launch a B2C site under a different name, has meanwhile integrated that site into its multichannel strategy. The plans of the other big groups, however, remain unclear, and apparently lacking in direction - perhaps because they do not feel particularly threatened - at least not yet. John Blau

17. US mail order companies
Traditional mail order companies got a head start in many aspects of how to run a business-to-consumer e-commerce operation from their lengthy experience of selling to customers remotely. But that advantage is only beginning to be felt - for example the leading US apparel catalogue retailer J. Crew's web sales finally eclipsed those from its core business only in March. One particular success story is the up-selling feature on J. Crew's recently revamped website. Based on the fast food gambit, "Do you want fries with that?" customers are offered a matching T-shirt or belt when they order a pair of slacks, for instance. Meanwhile, demographic data gleaned from online sales is helping the company make decisions about offline locations. And improved online sales are allowing other catalogue retailers, such as Land's End, to scale back costly postal marketing campaigns. Stephen Phillips

Second theme: IT in global money markets

18. Foreign exchange
Despite the collapse of many B2B exchanges, the e-marketplace model seems to be thriving in FX trading - for example FXall, one of the leading FX portals, trades more than $1bn a day. FX is one of the most commoditised banking services and for corporate customers, the advantages of the one-stop shop approach offered by multibank portals are clear cut. Nevertheless, asset managers have been slower to hang up the phone and embrace this new way of doing business, and the barriers to the widespread adoption of internet FX trading are cultural as well as technological. Geoffrey Nairn

19. Fraud detection
Compliance - and fraud detection - is a significant cost for any bank dealing in foreign currency. Unlike equity trading, most FX trading is over the counter (OTC) with dealers striking bargains, often by phone. Yet banks are under increasing pressure to spot transactions that could stem from criminal activity, no mean feat given the huge volumes moving daily on the world's money markets. How far can fraud detection software go to remove the need for expensive, human supervision and auditing, and does the growth in automated processing make life easier for the bank, or for the criminal? Stephen Pritchard

20. Messaging
Secure messaging services are critical to successful trading in the global money markets. Financial institutions are now preparing for a major technology changeover later this year when Swift, the leading international financial messaging service, has mandated a new set of messaging standards based on the ISO 15022 standard, replacing Swift's current message standards. The transition involves a great deal of investment in new systems and testing, and is a potentially headache for many institutions. There are some long-term technical issues to do with the message themselves that have yet to be worked out. For some financial institutions, it's the biggest technology change they will make this year. Douglas Hayward

21. Risk management
Global money trading is growing against a background of increased concerns and tighter regulation of operational and financial risk. What are market players doing to manage risk in the new global 24-hour trading environment and how can IT help? Philip Manchester

22. Profile - SOCX
Launched at the end of 2001, the London-based Settlement & Operations Clearing eXchange (SOCX) offers investment banks and financial institutions an outsourcing service covering money markets, foreign exchange, fixed income, and vanilla derivatives. A joint venture between US financial services software supplier Wall Street Systems and Deutsche Bank, the bank's Global Money Markets is the first client of SOCX, which is already processing all of its trades in the UK. Over the coming months, the service is expected to be rolled out progressively to support the bank's business in North America, Asia Pacific and the rest of Europe. Does the future of operations across the financial services industry lie with specialist outsourcing vehicles such as SOCX, or will other financial institutions be unwilling to use a service part-owned by another bank? Alan Stewart

Other articles and regular features

23. View from the top - subject and writer to be announced

24. News update - Geoff Nairn

* A different selection of these articles will appear in our UK, European and US editions. All the case studies will appear on our subscription-only website.

Simply click on a a link to read a synopsis.

FT-IT - June 19 2002

FT-IT - July 3 2002

Themes for 2002

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