The new infrastructure has demonstrated its worth in other ways. Leonard notes that after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it took about five minutes for the company to post on its U.S. sites a message expressing sorrow about the attacks and explaining Goodyear’s contribution to the rescue and relief effort. "One person in the Web operations group went into our content management system, inserted new content, hit the refresh button, and it was done," he says. When the sites ran on different servers, they would have had to be updated individually. When it’s time to roll out new e-commerce tools, the same ability to upload an application once and populate multiple sites is expected to save the company money on each deployment.

5. Look for lessons.

Every project has its glitches. Berg notes "a few testy moments" when he wasn’t sure whether some of Goodyear’s software vendors would survive the dotcom crash. From now on, says Leonard, the company is giving more weight to the long-term viability of its technology suppliers.

Meanwhile, Berg says that if he had to do the project over again, he would dig even more deeply for support from employees in the trenches?for example, involving product managers directly and enlisting managers at all levels to promote the project to their staffs. The lesson?that success is more likely with support from end users?is hardly new. However, the e-business team needed credibility with senior executives first, says Leonard. "I think it will be easier every time we have another one of these [companywide] projects because senior management will be more comfortable. They’ll know what we’re doing. And we’ll be able to spend even more time with the people on the street."