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In the rush to the Net, many companies let departments throw up Web sites
with little regard for how they would help the overall business. Now they're
trying to untangle their Net initiatives and get them focused on their core
business. Here's a sampling:



                      THE OLD WAY                      THE NEW WAY
Citigroup       In 1997, Citicorp set up          A Corporate Internet
                e-Citi as an incubator to         Operating Group oversees
                come up with Web businesses.      Net strategy, with e-Citi
                E-Citi spent $1.1 billion         providing technical support.
                and launched an Internet-         Now Citi has 38 U.S. sites,
                only bank called Citi f/i,        down from over 100. Citi-
                which landed only 30,000          group says moving its back-
                customers and created             office functions online will
                tension with other bank           save $1 billion-plus next
                units.                            year.   



Ryder System    Separate divisions put up         All the company's Web sites
                10 Web sites for everything       are now linked to ryder.com.
                from selling used tractor-        A redesign helps customers
                trailers to emergency road-       locate their shipments
                side service. But many didn't     within two clicks. Now Ryder
                link to the corporate site,       uses the Web to coordinate
                ryder.com. And its shipment-      its picking, packing, and
                tracking service was buried       shipping for customers.
                10 clicks deep into the
                ryder.com site.



Deere & Co.     Managers launched 13 Web          The company merged the
                initiatives, serving mar-         Web sites into deere.com.
                kets that generated little        Now customers can buy
                revenue. Deere makes most         new or used equipment,
                of its profits selling            seek service or repairs
                new construction equipment,       --or even use the Web
                yet it had three sites            site to configure their
                for used equipment.               own gear, a first for
                                                  Deere.