Here Comes The Intranet

In the brief annals of doing business on the Internet, Federal Express Corp.'s customer Web site has become a legendary success story. The package-delivery giant, which moves 2.4 million pieces every day, put up a server in November, 1994, on the World Wide Web that gave customers a direct window into FedEx' package-tracking database. By letting 12,000 customers per day click their way through Web pages to pinpoint their parcels--instead of asking a human operator to do it for them--FedEx was soon saving up to $2 million a year by some estimates.

"We saw the success of the package-tracking site and said, `Wow, I wonder what we could do on the inside?"' says Susan Goeldner, manager of Internet Technology for Federal Express. The answer: a lot. Today there are 60 Web sites running inside the company, most created for and by employees. Next, as part of a companywide Web push, FedEx is equipping its 30,000 office employees around the world with Web browsers so they will have access to a slew of new sites being set up inside the company's Memphis headquarters.