Customer Reviews

Digital Transformation: The Essentials of e-Business Leadership

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I bought the book on the basis of two criterion: the authors are managers or former managers of KPMG and customer reviews were rather good. Well, these 2 criterion do not seem to be entirely reliable! The book is very short, printed with big fonts like a book for children, you read it in 1 hour and you wonder: what have I found there that I have not read many times before in, for instance, Business Week? Well, the answer is: nothing.You get all the clichés of e-business or the synthesis of other writers' work without any original ideas. The book is full of "You need to be cutting edge to succeed" (p.87) or "You can't escape change" (p.42)... No, really?! The chapter 7 for intance raises an interesting question: "Do It In-House or Spin It Off?". The authors say: Clayton Christensen gave the answer in its best-seller "The Innovator's Dilemma"... And the 10 pages of the chapter are indeed a comment of Christensen. Hello! Has KPMG really nothing to say on this important topic?! Even the examples that are given are so broad in their purpose that you cannot do anything with them. I think that I have never read any book on e-business that is, I must say, so thin in terms of content. I hope that KPMG has something better to offer to their customers!

It always amazes when consulting firms produce tomes such as these with the expectation that a relatively shallow skimming of the waters combined with quotes from firm clients is enough to impart "wisdom to the masses". Even as a KPMG advertisement it fails; there is not enough depth, thought, or original thinking to interest anyone in retaining them to help "transform" their business. In the pantheon of business books it ranks near the bottom - stick with some of the classics, or better yet - read HBR, Wired, Upside, or Red Herring for a better picture of digital trends and their impact on business.

Ever notice how the really good teachers (the ones with the deepest subject knowledge) are also those who impart their wisdom the most succinctly and simply?

This is what Patel and McCarthy have done with Digital Transformation, a thoughtful, pragmatic discussion of what being an eBusiness really means.

The book is short enough that most folks could polish it off on a five hour flight - a welcome departure from the blathery eBiz treatises that occupy most bookstore shelf space (whose main aim seems to be the self-aggrandisement of the author).

In Digital Transformation, Patel and McCarthy underscore that eBusiness is less about the ubiquitous dot com appendage and its accessories than it is about using technology to redefine a company's business strategy and means of delivering on it.

The discourse is peppered with interesting commentary from such eBusiness mavericks as John Chambers (Cisco), Vint Cerf, Priceline CEO Dan Schulman and Dave Wetherell of CMGI fame.

Now, if only other business books could be as simple and relevant, there'd be more shady trees under which to read them.

This book is well written, and I think it succeeds in providing an entertaining strategic view of e-Business success factors. The following chapter descriptions may help the reader decide to pick it off the shelf.

Chapter 1 Who's Winning at e-Business? -- an overview of successes (CISCO and Intel) and non-successes (IBM and Levi Strauss) at making the jump to successful e-business selling over the Internet.

Chapter 2 The Vision Thing -- the core of the book's approach, which emphasizes that successful e-business transformation begins with generating a vision of what the expected e-business will become as an Internet presence. This e-Vision generation process must be the heart of any approach to starting an e-business effort.

Chapter 3 Transformation -- detail about how companies must commit to transformation of their business model in order to succeed at e-business. This applies mainly to bricks-and-mortar companies that have not made the e-business leap.

Chapter 4 First-Over Advantages and New Business Models -- describes how good business models enable first-to-market companies to establish huge Internet presence in spite of lack of profitability or bricks-and-mortar tangibility.

Chapter 5 The B2B Challenges -- details the success of CISCO and Intel into completely transforming their business-to-business relationships into Internet e-businesses.

Chapter 6 The B2C Challenges -- details the experiences and difficulties of dot-com companies in selling to customers directly over the Web, and in establishing themselves as Web presences.

Chapter 7 Do It In-house or Spin It Off -- looks at the experience of established companies that created in-house Internet departments and then had to decide whether to keep or spin off the successful efforts. Explores the idea of "disruptive technology" that clashes with the current culture/business model versus "sustaining technology" that enables further success of the current culture/model. Looks at several industries, from automotive to brokerage.

Chapter 8 Preparing for the Unpredictable -- looks at surprising occurrences in recent past of Internet e-business, and discusses similar expectations for the future. Again there is an emphasis on vision and business model in trying to predict how the future will develop. This chapter is a fun one to read. Contains predictions from many of e-industry's founders and leaders about how the future will develop. Wireless transformation is high among them.

A lot of people have have made negative comments about this book because it does not give new ideas. This book is not going to provide you with any technical solutions to develope your e-business but it was also not meant to do that. It gives the non-experiened e-businessperson the rules and how to formulate your own vision to how your company should function. It also explains what has changed in business cycle due to the e-commerce factor. I found it was explained very clearly for anybody to understand. The target audience for this book is somebody who is new to e-commerce.

With so much Internet hype over the past few years, it is refreshing to see a common sense analysis of how to integrate the new ecommerce concepts into your business. McCarthy brings a refreshingly clear and understandable perspective to the ecommerce challenge. This book is a must read for senior executives struggling to develop an Internet strategy. I read it in one sitting, and found myself writing action items in the margins of almost every chapter. By the end, you are looking for McCarthy's phone number, for KPMG obviously has thought long and hard about how to adapt your business to the ecommerce age. This is an exceptional book. It is succinct, imaginative, and practical. Buy it. Read it. Use it. If you don't, your competitors will.

This is a good book to get a quick study on some basic e-business, however, it is dated and does certainly not intent to spark any ideas.
If you desire to read stuff more profound and more connected to real business, pick something else, for example, 'Seven Steps to Nirvana' from Mohan Sahwney from Kellogg School of Management.

short with no content.. every book on e business is better. author must have read a few articles and thought he could write

Very disappointed. I agree with one of the previous reviews. It's full of things I could pick up from magazines and full of cliches. Expected a lot more. Read it in a couple of hours (on and off). Waste of money.

This book is a brief description of the impact of the Internet on Businesses of all kind. It starts with b2b e-business success stories like Cisco, FedEx and Ingram Micro whose business volumes on the web is several hundred fold greater than more popular b2c companies like Amazon.Com and Yahoo !. The most important factor to succeed in e-business starts with the right vision of the top management and the book provides a simple and effective framework that integrates business and technology drivers with the e-business strategy.

"Digital Transformation" as defined by KPMG is not just the conversion of text, images, voice and video into digital form but also involves the changes in the business processes associated with them. Once the vision and strategy are in place it is important to move fast and get the "first mover advantage" since in the new economy it is the first movers who walk away with all the marbles.

One chapter each is devoted to b2b and b2c challenges and in each case the business model is brought out well.

The authors then borrow the concept of " disruptive technology" - the term coined by Prof Clayton Christensen in his book " The innovators dilemma". The web as a disruptive technology and what this means to diverse industries - Travel, Broking, Automobiles is quite interesting. In fact I have started reading " Innovator's Dilemma" once again.

The final chapter is devoted to future trends ( and threats !).

An excellent summary of what it means to be transformed- Digitally, in just about 120 pages.