Inside out

摘要

Dotcoms may be moribund, but inside companies, the Internet is still finding cost-saving new uses. "B2E-busi-ness-to-employee—didn't have a crash," says Bipin Patel, in charge of developing the potential of the corporate intranet at the Ford Motor Company. "It's still growing." Ford has gone further than most companies to get its employees online: it offered its American employees personal computers, and 90% of them accepted. Ford hopes that the free pcs will save its own and its employees' time by moving services online. General Motors, Ford's great rival, considered a similar scheme but found that most employees willing to use pcs already had them. It is helping staff to pay for high-bandwidth connections instead.