Artful balance

Customer demand for transparency has major implications for the way banks prioritize and fund their e-commerce initiatives. To avoid Balkanizing their online ventures, most major institutions have appointed some kind of coordinating officer to provide an enterprise-wide view of e-commerce. At the same time, banks have discovered that departmental input really does matter. A rough balance between centralized coordination and departmental control is now emerging. Strategists agree the dreaded silo mentality should not pervade Web ventures. Hence the appointment of coordinating executives, loosely termed "e-commerce czars." But these czars typically chair committees where affected business units are fully represented in decisions about which projects to fund.