Spending your leisure time studying for an MBA in e-commerce may
secure you a high-flying job or it may be a waste of money.
Nick Booth analyses the latest IT gold rush
If you've worked in the IT industry for more than five minutes
your name will be on all kinds of junk-mail-generating databases.
In which case, you can't fail to have noticed how popular
e-commerce training courses have become. Everyone, even the
government, knows it will be crucial to come to terms with this
mysterious new entity. More pertinently, there's tons of money to
be made in e-commerce. But, as with many of IT's 'gold rushes'
before, nobody really knows with any certainty where all this money
is going to be unearthed and those that think they know are keeping
quiet.
All we do know is that e-commerce skills will be at a premium.
Precisely which skills, nobody knows, but there are plenty of
people willing to take your money to train you in something vaguely
e-commerce related. If, in later life, this enables you to fully
exploit the commercial opportunities that e-commerce will bring,
this will be an added bonus. Your success story will be hijacked
and published on marketing brochures to promote, say, MBA courses
in e-commerce.
According to the publicity machine for one MBA course,
e-commerce under-graduates are being headhunted by the big hitters
in e-business before they've even completed their studies.
Companies such as Razorfish, MediaLab and Excite have all used MBA
courses as recruiting grounds for their next highly paid e-business
strategists, they say.
Is this true? This all sounds very familiar to anyone who
remembers previous skill shortages. They said the same about
fourth-generation programming languages (4GLs) a decade ago. These
new relational programming languages were going to 'revolutionise
business'. You didn't need programming skills but you did need
business acumen and, well, a small degree of technical literacy.
Marry the two together, through a training course in 4GLs, and in
no time you'd be filtering all non-personal callers through your
recruitment agent.
Except, of course, it didn't work out that way. The skills gap
in 4GL expertise was never closed and these days few people even
remember it because inevitably something more exciting came along
to replace it. The dilemma in IT is frequently which skill-shortage
bandwagon to jump on. Should you get this one, or will something
better come along in a minute?
The danger for anyone contemplating an e-business course is that
they may repeat the experiences of those who wasted years of their
free time trying to jump on the 4GL bandwagon. If history repeats
itself, tens of thousands of pounds will be gambled by people
nationwide, only to find that, after devoting their evenings,
week-ends, or even whole months at a time, they have a
qualification that's of no use to anyone. As those who studied 4GL
will testify, when a skill is in demand, anyone with any knowledge
is out in the market making a fortune.
Many 4GL training courses were run by Cobol retired programmers
with no knowledge of 4GL at all. Are the new crop of e-commerce
MBAs or HNDs being run along similar lines?
Dr Ashley Braganza of the Cranfield School of Management agrees
that there are some very dodgy operators out there in the training
market. When buying any new product in a new market, you should
adopt the trusted brands. "When e-commerce burst onto the scenes
two or three years ago, we were concerned at the speed at which
everything took off. We were keen to avoid the hype and learn what
we were doing before we started shooting from the hip. There are a
lot of courses that have nothing to say and contribute even less,"
says Braganza. If the suppliers of skills seem pessimistic, you
should hear what they say on the demand side. Ian Ross is the
managing director of MRI, which hosts e-businesses or companies and
is always in the market for people with technical and business
skills. "These e-commerce MBAs are currently useless," he
splutters. "How can they be any good? There isn't enough material,
experience and good old fashioned tried-and-tested case studies to
make any real comparative evaluation. The concept of e-commerce
hasn't spanned four years, even. What you need as a business is to
find key staff with a proven track record in maintaining a
profitable e-business. We've all been burnt taking on 'experts',
paying them inflated market rates and having an unfathomable mess
to deal with as your company is used as a training ground. It's all
very dangerous for an employer."
Pragmatic Points
Braganza accepts this but points out that the courses designed
these days are a lot more pragmatic. "Technology's never been any
good without the business knowledge to apply it. And vice versa. We
have two constituents we can cater for in our courses. First,
there's the people from dotcom start-ups who often have no business
experience and need to learn some of the principles. And more
importantly, we can take people with good knowledge and experience
in business and devise modules that help them realise what
technology can do for them," says Braganza.
At Cranfield the emphasis is definitely more strategic than
technical. Any e-commerce course has a duty to teach people how
e-commerce is affecting business, advises Braganza, so avoid any
course that does not cover how e-commerce affects industry as a
whole, how it affects companies internally and what companies
should be doing with their stakeholders - shareholders, suppliers,
customers and anyone else who affects the prosperity of the
company.
One of the duties of a good course, he says, is to teach people
how little business has changed. The marketing messages behind
e-commerce have confused people about what it can do. Never trust
anyone who says e-commerce changes all the rules of business, says
Braganza. "I've seen a lot of people, who I thought were too long
in the tooth to fall for all that dotcom crap, suddenly start
acting as if everything's changed. It hasn't. Especially the
unpleasant stuff like needing discipline and deliverable profits,"
says Braganza. "The irony is, it's the business grounding that is
much more valuable than the technology."
All you really need from an MBA, he says, is a technology module
that gives you an overview of the possibilities of technology.
That's a lot harder than you think, warns Andy Coutts, a director
of e-Centre, a 16,000 member organisation that draws up standards
and practices for e-commerce. "We try to instill in traditional
bricks-and-mortar businesses an awareness of e-commerce, but
sometimes the very mention of the word makes them resemble rabbits
trapped in the headlights of a speeding juggernaut. The irony is,
they've got a far better grounding than someone who doesn't know
the basics of business."
Nothing beats experience
Although Coutts advises people on getting the right mixture of
"new old skills and old new skills" through masters degrees and
MBAs, he agrees that, at this stage, something more pragmatic is
called for in the short term. Forget full-time study, he says. "If
you turn your back on this industry for five minutes, you'll get
left way behind. You're better off doing some sort of monitored
study or part-time theory work to augment your practical
experience," says Coutts.
Besides which, academia isn't mature enough yet to address
anyone on e-commerce, according to Mike O'Hagan, the co-founder of
Big Blue Steel Tiger, an e-commerce integrator and developer.
Despite the practical experience he gained in setting up systems
for companies such as Lastminute.com and Interbrew, O'Hagan wanted
to study e-commerce as part of the MBA he is sitting at Reading
University. The problem was that e-commerce modules aren't
available. "A lot of the big schools view e-commerce as just
another route to market that doesn't warrant its own
all-singing, all dancing course."
Nonsense, says Andy McGovern, who has been taken on by Unisys as
an information services specialist after completing an e-business
course. He argues that it will almost certainly help your career,
as long as you pick the right balance. "The MBA course I attended
had an e-business element and, coupled with my e-business-focused
dissertation, this helped me obtain my e-business consultant
position at Unisys and had a definite effect on my salary," says
McGovern.
The old and the new
This illustrates the difference between the older generation of
IT companies and the new e-commerce start-ups, says Alan Scutt,
vice-president of Clear Commerce. "We don't necessarily need
someone who has been on a course. What we need is experience.
That's what makes you valuable, not the qualifications. All the
head hunters I know say there's a real shortage of people out there
with e-business experience. If someone has done a course to
understand e-commerce, that clearly shows initiative, but we would
still have to start them off at the bottom because, without
know-how, they're not the finished article," says Scutt.
If you're reading this article, the chances are you're already
doing the hardest part of ascending the summit of e-commerce;
getting practical knowledge. This is what will make you more
marketable. A pure e-business course seems pointless, according to
the consensus of opinion we have canvassed here. The tricky part is
finding a course that fits into your schedule (See box, far left).
Of course, you could bluff your way in and hope nobody finds out.
As generations of people have discovered, what they don't tell you
about degrees is that, at then end of them, nobody wants you
without experience. Experience, however, is something you just
can't fake.
Suits you: What sort of course is best for you?
There is a huge range of academic study from which to choose.
Portsmouth University claims to be the first in the country to
offer an MA in marketing with e-commerce. It also offers an MSC in
e-commerce with marketing. These are fine if you're new to IT, but
if you're already on the e-commerce bandwagon, you don't want to
have to get off and watch it go thundering into the distance while
you study. E-business or e-commerce is offered as a module for MBAs
now at courses run by the University of North London, UMIST,
Cardiff and, as we have seen, Reading University. These can all be
taken as part-time courses.
Some companies are sponsoring staff to study e-commerce. Web
consultancy Clockwork Web, for example, is paying for Paul
Wreford-Brown to study a post graduate diploma in e-commerce three
evenings a week at BirkBeck College in London. He won't have a
social life until summer 2002.
Not that Paul will instantly sell his skills to the highest
bidder once he has completed the course. Often companies will pay
for staff but, understandably, will attempt to bind their employees
into working for them for the next three to five years.
A more affordable, and flexible, option is offered by Acadamee,
an online learning company. It costs £1,500 but can be studied in
your free time. Studying online means you have an 'e-coach', or
mentor. Still, if you're going to study e-commerce you might as
well get into the spirit of the thing and do it online. The course
is devised by content experts, learning designers and
developers.
"The only effective e-learning you do will be at work. We devise
activities so people can apply their learning and develop their
knowledge and understanding," says Simon Hayward, the CEO of this
new training organisation. "The Web is pervasive so it's much more
sensible and constructive to help you develop your work as you go
along, rather than work on projects and theory that have no
connection with your work."
University challenge: Where to find e-business
courses
E-commerce Innovation Centre
Funded by British Telecom
Manchester City College runs a variety of courses from HND to
MA
rhollywood@ccm.ac.uk
0161 957 1734
E-Commerce Assessment Courses are run by Clicksure in
association with Oxford University
phendey@clicksure.com
The Virtual University
This online university runs a variety of courses relevant to
e-business www.virt-u.com
The Centre of Expertise in Electronic Commerce, UMIST,
Manchester
info@ceec.org.uk
0161 200 3307
The eCommerce Innovation Centre
Cardiff University www.ecommerce.ac.uk
029 20874714
The e-commerce integrator: courses too premature
Mike O'Hagan, chief operating officer of Big Blue Steel Tiger,
an e-commerce integrator/design company
O'Hagan is just completing a part-time MBA at Reading
University. "I haven't been offered any special e-commerce
technical modules on my course. The general thinking is that
e-business is just another route to market, so it doesn't warrant
its own all-singing all-dancing course."
O'Hagan says it is too early in the day for academia to pass on
the wisdom gathered by e-commerce pioneers because they are all too
busy making their own mistakes right now. It will be a few more
years before all this knowledge can be formally passed on, he
believes. "The whole space isn't mature enough yet. The important
thing to understand [when studying for a career in e-commerce] is
the essential business principles around each different route to
market.
"Besides, I don't know anyone who has completed an e-commerce
course, in this company or anywhere else, which tells its own
story," he concludes.
The business administrator: refocus and retrain
Andy McGovern, an e-business consultant at Unisys
Andy McGovern, studied an MBA in Business Administration (with
e-business modules) at Brunel University. "It is becoming
increasingly common for universities to ask industry experts into
the classroom in order to provide up-to-date and relevant industry
knowledge. The MBA course I attended has an e-business element and,
coupled with my e-business-focused dissertation, helped me obtain
my position at Unisys. It also had a definite effect on my
salary.
Prior to joining Unisys I had worked for a large US security
consultancy in Asia and I would not have got very far in my
interview with Unisys if I hadn't taken the time to retrain and
refocus my skills to demonstrate e-business knowledge.
E-commerce courses are essential in order to refocus and
retrain. Many e-business courses have to be taught in the classroom
as they require tacit exchange of knowledge between pupils and
trainers."