PricewaterhouseCoopers says an incredible 70% of UK companies launching themselves into e-business are so beguiled by the potential of the internet that they fail to trial their systems first.

The typical result is widespread problems, with over a fifth of these companies suffering significant customer service disruption.

"While businesses have been racing to get to market first, we are beginning to see that hasty launches, which do not deliver first class, resilient services, are losing customers, compromising shareholder value and ultimately choking business growth," reports PwC's Charles Johnson. "Many companies are limping through a succession of internet service disruptions and relying on tolerant customers not to seek an alternative service."

PwC advocates a series of steps to ensure that resilience is built into e-business initiatives:

• test systems and processes in a pilot phase
• build in contingency capacity, but avoid overload by adopting a phased launch
• duplicate key resources in order to eliminate single-point failure
• build in early-warning problem detection
• make sure existing systems can cope with new ones
• check your back-up and recovery capabilities.

Elliott Chase