Aggressive business management next year With an aggressive business management approach in the cards for next year, Dacom e- Biz Business Division is poised to speed up the Division's pace of growth, as it is considered to have the highest growth potential within Dacom's several business divisions. The company's e-Biz Business Division has been providing comprehensive services for Internet business - including security service (www.dacomisg.com), webhard service (www.webhard.co.kr), Internet memory service (www.imory.co.kr), application service, PG service e-Credit (http://ecredit. dacom.net) and e-Biz consulting service. Though the Division's slice of the pie is not large in comparison to other business divisions in Dacom, the e-Biz Business Division's growth pace is widely assessed to be good, despite turnover of no more than 73.3 billion won (approx. US$7.2 million) in comparison with the Internet data division's turnover 486.1 billion won (approx. US$ 469 million), the telephone division's turnover 480.7 billion won (approx. 463 million), among the company's total revenue 1.0685 trillion won in 2004. However, on the back of this year's improving business performance of the e- Biz Business, vice president Kim Jin- Seok, says that the Division is likely to be able to further boost its growth with an aggressive business management approach next year. Proactive participation in Informatization projects for SMEs What is most noteworthy among e-Biz's business spheres, is that the Division is striving to provide smaller companies with more reasonable and stable service by proactively participating in the government's smaller company Informatization project. "First of all," Kim pointed out "Smaller companies' informatization is falling behind that of the larger firms." He went on to explain that in Korea there are 2.9 million smaller companies with fewer than 50 employees. Due to shortages of funding and specialized manpower, smaller company's informatization level remains at low level, the vice president added. By participating in the government's smaller company informatization project proactively since 2003, he noted that Dacom's e-Biz Business Division is doing its best to nurture solution companies as well as to provide smaller companies with 32 services of five spheres, such as e- Commerce, storage and communication, information security, collaboration on SCM between companies, and specialization solutions by industry types. The vice president explains that the largest benefits of e-Biz service will go to smaller companies, not to larger companies. In that respect, he advises regarding e-Biz business model's solution by stages that a gradual approach method should be taken. For instance, Kim advises that in the first stage, an e-Biz business provider like Dacom's e-Biz Business Division, must provide smaller companies with solutions that can offer substantial benefits, such as DACOM eCredit and circulation SCM etc. As the second stage, the vice president envisages providing smaller companies with in-house informatization solutions on the basis of recognition change about informatization, such as groupware, CRM, and SMS+FAX+VMS, etc. As the third stage, he maintained that an e-Biz business provider should provide Service On Demand, rather than offering separate solutions. A pioneer of domestic e-Biz In addition to its informatization business for smaller companies, Dacom's e-Biz Business Division is spearheading the development of the domestic e-Biz corporate environment as a pioneer in this field. Starting from the first EDI service to be offered in Korea in 1987, Dacom has been a living example of domestic e-Biz - including the first portal/community Chollian in 1988, the first magic FAX in 1989, the first IDC (KIDC) in Dec. 1999, the first electronic settlement solution at home in August, 1998, the first ASP (application service provider) service (OnNET21 groupware) in Dec. 1999, and the first Webhard service in January, 2000. Kim who has personally been involved in its e-Biz business since 1987, proudly pointed out that Dacom is already providing 367,000 subscribers with brisk e-Biz service through 32 services in the five spheres mentioned earlier, as of the end of September 2005. In addition, the e-Biz Business Division is offering a variety of ASP services for company such as FAX service, G/W service, ERP service and so on plus more differentiated value-added service such as circulation SCM, eCredit, T-banking, mobile banking, groupware OnNET21, and Webhard. Concerning the Division's plan to advance into overseas markets as well as joint ventures with foreign partners, Kim said that Dacom's e-Biz Business Division would focus its efforts on becoming the No. 1 business provider in the domestic e- Biz field rather than turning its focus to overseas business immediately. Nevertheless, Dacom's e-Biz Business Division is poised to crank up its overseas market involvement as the Division promotes IDC projects in earnest in Thailand. And in the case of Webhard too, the Division is winning customers in English-speaking countries starting from the launch of its English Webhard service, and is planning to make inroads into Japan as well as China in 2006. Highest growth potential Dacom is proving its superiority to its competitors in terms of its level of awareness in the market and its userfriendly aspects, whereas the company is somewhat fragile on the overseas brand awareness side compared with KT, etc., the vice president pointed out. As to the main reasons for this, he mentioned the shortage of in-house resources and the absence of global business organization, in comparison to KT. However, the vice president has committed himself to launching an aggressive business management next year, now that Dacom's e-Biz Business Division is one of the areas that are performing briskly within Dacom's overall business spheres, and with the highest growth potential too.