American Express CEO Ken Chenault spoke at today’s Forrester’s Executive Strategy Forum about the impact the Internet has had on American Express.
As with many companies, our Internet strategy has evolved. Relative to many of our peers, we moved online early. Netscape, the symbol of Internet emergence, came into being 400 weeks ago. At American Express we‚ve been online for 360. Initially we regarded the Internet primarily from the topline — as a source of potential revenue. We viewed the Internet as a new business opportunity – we‚d use it to expand into banking and brokerage, and to become an online destination site for our customers.
What we found instead was that the economic benefit of being online would be gained in other ways –
- through the addition of more new customers to our existing businesses,
- as a more efficient means of cross sell,
- and through lower servicing costs.
We have succeeded by thoughtfully integrating our offline and online activities. The Internet has become an extension and an evolution of how we conduct our business, with a little bit of revolution thrown in as well. And we have found that our business models – in payments and in financial services – are particularly amenable to capitalizing on the Internet‚s advantages.
We have used the Internet to change:
- The way we serve and acquire our customers;
- The way we develop our products and services;
- And, it has improved the economics of our businesses.
Netscape was born 400 weeks ago. Gosh, how time flies, especially Internet time!