When George Bell first sat down to develop his strategic plan for excite@home he had to identify and overcome several environmental problems. For example, American Online (AOL) and Yahoo were already leading the web portal business, in which they were well established and had a strong customer base. Additionally, the competition in general was high with new companies entering the web portal business daily. Furthermore, George had to overcome the knowledge barrier, in that, Excite employees were well versed on the inner workings of the web portal business, but had little to no knowledge on the cable, modem, and broadband business. The same also applied to the employees at @home. Excite@Home also faced technology problems with regards to the backbone or system with which to provide the high speed connectivity to it customers. Many of the cable users were in locations that did not have the fiber optic cables needed to provide the high speed services which resulted in many customers opting for DSL services instead. The final and in my opinion the greatest obstacle that George Bell faced was that of disputes between the various partners of excite@home. AT&T, Comcast, and Cox Cable Company could not agree on how each organization would handle the other content providers (AOL, Yahoo, etc) in regards to the use of their broadband networks.
Each of the above listed points would have been a challenge to anyone developing a strategic plan for their organization. However, by identifying and developing a plan that took these items into consideration, George Bell would have had a greater likelihood of success. In addition to the challenges that George Bell faced, he also had a couple big advantages going into this merger. For example, @Home was in at the grassroots level of the broadband business. The potential for success was incredible had George taken advantage of this booming technology. Furthermore, when Excite and @Home merged, the...