Analyzing the firm's ability to manage information technology. This initiative is the most challenging. For those seeking to sell directly online, there are also new pragmatic issues to address. Marketing is still critical, but the challenges are different. Providing security for the customer is crucial, but so is the ability of the business to determine if the sale is legitimate.
Fraud is higher in cyberspace than in traditional retail and harder to detect.
New businesses are springing up to address these problems, but that means being able to understand their proposed solutions and evaluate them without their having a long track record. While there is currently a moratorium on sales taxes for Web retail, it is by no means certain that will be extended after this year. Critical to the success of converting organizational structure to this new challenge is the ability of top management to champion the change. To put this into perspective, many of today's top managers were halfway up the corporate ladder when the personal computer was invented, circa 1982. Obviously, the creation and growth of the World Wide Web came long after their formative development years.