WISs and electronic commerce

eb information systems are revolutionizing commerce. For starters, the Web reduces to nearly nothing many marginal costs of doing business, such as communications and customer service. Startup companies such as Amazon.com and CDNow have outperformed the leading national chains by successfully adapting traditional telephone and catalog sales models to exploit these radical economics. Similar competitive advantages are now being achieved in the services sector by Web-based banks, stock traders, insurance brokers, and travel agents. Indeed, the Web’s advantages are even more pronounced with services because fulfillment as well as sales can be completed online. A handful of supersites now offer customers the opportunity to compare thousands of insurance policies and loans. No wonder expensive networks of brokers and bank branches, with their limited selection of proprietary products and inefficient paper-based processes, are increasingly seen as liabilities rather than assets. These early successes, though impressive, barely tap the Web’s potential for transforming commerce. The next generation of Web-based businesses will not merely adapt existing business models and organizations; they will invent fundamentally new ones that are inconceivable without the Net. Their focus will not be on selling things from a Web site but rather on using the Web to link buyers, sellers, and organizations in innovative ways. Moreover, they will exploit emerging technology that is making the Web accessible to computers as well as people. Today’s Web provides people with unprecedented access to online information and services. However, because the information is unstructured, computers cannot readily understand it. This limitation helps explain why search engines and automated shopping agents don’t work very well. Tomorrow’s Web will provide information and services in a structured form that is readily accessible to both people and computers. Companies will publish data sheets, price lists, airline schedules, stock reports, bank statements and the like directly on the