127 of 130 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent resource for senior managers, November 27, 1999
This review is from: Enterprise E-Commerce (Hardcover)
Fingar, Kumar and Sharma state that their book is meant for the CEO as well as the CIO. By and large they have succeeded but sometimes you have to work to get the knowledge. They do an excellent job of defining the three phases of e-commerce. Phase one is basically putting your catalog on the web, phase two lets you do some things electronically such as receive orders, manage inventory, pay bills etc. and phase three involves radically redesigning your business and value proposition creating new positioning paradigms, new businesses and entirely new revenue streams. The authors have worked with many leading edge companies in e-commerce and share thier insights and real examples and this alone makes the book worthwhile.
The authors sometimes speak in jargon and this is somewhat disconcerting even though the jargon is explained in the text. There are excellent sections - including quotes - on how the technology the authors espouse can be used in business and this is wworth its weight in diamonds. If you are a CEO looking to take your company to new peaks of growth, this book will not only give you invaluable ideas, it will also give you a roadmap. Its a must read.
One weakness of the book is that it does not acknowledge, let alone treat, the personnel problems associated with technology and e-commerce. Many reengineering projects have failed because of reluctance to change to new ways of thinking and acting. It is your responsibility to get sources to fill in this gap.
If you want to understand how technology is reshaping the world of business, this book is a must read. The resources, suggested readings and bibliography are excellent aids.
Srikumar S. Rao is Louis and Johanna Vorzimer Professor of Marketing at Long Island University, Brookville, NY.
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50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well thought out issues, best approach to solutions., April 11, 2000
This review is from: Enterprise E-Commerce (Hardcover)
To maintain our standing in the top 10 ten technical MBA programs in the nation, we must prepare our graduates to be the innovative business leaders that will thrive in the Digital Economy. At the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business, we recognize the inseparability of the new e-business models and the technology used to develop and support them. Enterprise E-Commerce fully explores these new business models, cross-company commerce processes, agile software components and digital strategies of electronic business.
The book presents a series of very well thought out issues of interest to anyone involved in significant e-commerce endeavors, issues related to digital marketplaces and extending business processes via electronic supply chains from the viewpoint of various players.
The software component orientation serves as comfort to those who have suffered through enterprise software development in the past and should bring excitement to those beginning their careers in this area. When time-to market is of concern to developers, it is the only show in town.
I complement the authors on their holistic and comprehensive approach to e-commerce and am especially grateful for their insights into how current technology enables significant improvements in extended enterprise models.
The book is required reading for our graduate students in Decision and Information Sciences concentrating in e-business. We adopted the book so that we would have the best learning resource available for this brave new world.
Dr. Daniel Conway, Decision & Information Sciences Warrington College of Business, University of Florida
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Moments of brilliance, but not consistent, April 17, 2001
This review is from: Enterprise E-Commerce (Hardcover)
The subject of E-commerce is a curious one. I mean, what is it? Is it only electronic storefronts, or does it apply to airline frequent flier sites? What about business to business? What exactly do you expect to find in a book on this subject? Do you need a how-to guide on building transaction-oriented web applications? E-commerce texts seem to fall into 1 of 3 areas: marketing, design, and 'both'. This book falls into the 'both' category.
I can easily envision a generation of MBA students (with no actual experience doing anything in the real world) being inspired by this book, and confidently setting out into the work world armed with a veritable dictionary full of E-commerce buzzwords. After all, that is much of what an education consists of-gaining a specialized language. In this book, the buzzwords come thick and fast. The reader is warned about this on the cover, and the authors take pains to explain in the preface that just because something is a buzzword, doesn't mean that it doesn't mean anything. Such use of language can be distracting, but keep in mind that sometimes a paradigm actually is a paradigm.
Several of the chapters are almost inspirational, especially Chapter 1, which is profound and insightful, providing guidance to both general managers and technicians. Engineers would be well-advised to avoid being naïve about human behavior and not let their personal feelings about privacy blind them to the consumer desire for customization. Many web sites would be much more appealing to their patrons if their designers and decision-makers understood this chapter and its e-commerce imperatives.
Unfortunately, the book is marred by an uneven approach. Chapter 7, for instance, is a disaster, filled with gems like "An industry-specific component is unique to a given industry." This chapter is on component-based development, which is a difficult and complex subject, yet is crucial to contemporary E-business application architectures. I'm not sure how much a non-technical person can expect to get out of this chapter, but the gist of it probably comes through, and at least the reader gets exposed to important technology acronyms such as CORBA and JDBC.
Chapter 8, "E-Commerce Business and Technology Strategies," appears to have been written by the same author as Chapter 1, and it flies high, containing very wise statements such as "Before inter-enterprise teams can be effective, they need to build a shared vision." Internet applications are complex; I have seen what happens without such a shared vision, and it isn't pretty. Unfortunately, this chapter bogs down in sections also. I think the author is onto something profound with "What if the business engineering process was carried out with business components as the modeling medium?" but I really don't understand what it means-just a bit more discussion might have resulted in a blinding insight for me here.
One area that I thought especially interesting was the topic of standards, and the politics behind the standards bodies. The experience of the authors in this ever-changing business area is shared here to the benefit of architects who have to choose among competing standards-choices that may turn out to be very expensive several years down the road.
Overall, the book is information dense. There is quite a lot of ideas here, and I kept several colors of highlighter busy during the first read through. I might skim it again, because I didn't get it all the first time. There are so many things to discuss when a book sets out to introduce both the business models and the technology models. I think the authors were more successful in the former, and their introduction of concepts such as 'agility' and 'community' would greatly help the architects, designers, and coders in understanding exactly why they are being asked to do what they are doing. As far as the technology presentation goes, in general it is superficial and inadequate. Security is a vitally important topic in E-commerce design, but is given very little coverage. A 1.5 page introduction to the topic of public key encryption is entirely inadequate-I personally cannot cover this complex idea in such a short amount of space. Several of the other technology areas were given equally short shrift, making this a whirlwind tour that introduces, but doesn't always satisfy.
I recommend it, but I wish it were less uneven. The book does live up to its jacket, and it is entirely reasonably to claim "This comprehensive guide takes a holistic view of business and technology, enabling CEOs, COOs, CIOs, and CTOs to move boldly into their e-Commerce initiatives." It truly is an information system area that requires a high degree of interaction between both sides of a corporation, and the firms that succeed in this space will be those with employees who understand both technology and marketing. "Enterprise E-Commerce" provides a useful bridge between these often conflicting functions.
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