It will be the desktop that we all use to conduct business at Whirlpool. There also are areas that provide the greatest return on investment from moving online.
Procurement is a prime example.
At Chase Manhattan Corp., online purchasing through software from Intelisys Electronic Commerce LLC is one of the many self-service applications available to employees on the ChaseWeb intranet. Texas Instruments Inc.'s online procurement project is changing the company's entire approach to purchase approvals. Instead of routing every employee requisition to managers for approval beforehand, the application automatically approves all purchases below a specified limit, and notifies management of the transaction when it sends it to the vendor via the Web. Online procurement will help eliminate the mistakes that can happen when Stonebridge employees key in accounting information, and it will standardize the supplies available to Stonebridge-managed hotels, rather than making each property manager responsible for finding and buying his or her own supplies. Web-enabling Stonebridge's procurement process is only the first step, Gericke says.