The Search for Digital Excellence [Hardcover]

Judith Gebauer (Author), Amir Hartman (Author), Malu Roldan (Author), James P. Ware (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1998

This volume covers the new strategies for exploiting the Internet-based technology in the emerging digital economy, including lessons learned, critical success factors and 25 multi-dimensional case studies. Other topics discussed include: building e-commerce from the inside-out; consumer based e-commerce; impact on the organization, the people and barriers to success; and WWW sites - new information and never out of date.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Search for Digital Excellence takes on the nuts and bolts of electronic commerce--how it can be used to attract and keep customers and how it can benefit the company that uses it. A key point of the book is one that should not come as a shock to anyone who understands any form of business, but that many--if not most--Web practitioners tend to forget: e-commerce success--let alone excellence--is not a matter of technology. It's a matter of building worthwhile relationships within the company and between the company and its customers.

The authors discovered, however, that the approach to building those relationships is different in an electronic environment than it is when dealing face to face, by telephone, or by catalog. They expound and expand upon five key principles of e-commerce success: (1) Competitive advantages are more difficult to achieve and harder yet to maintain.
(2) Technological solutions will not put you ahead because your competitors can use them as easily as you can.
(3) Traditional long-range planning must give way to constant self-questioning and the search for unpredicted, emerging opportunities.
(4) Isolation is deadly, while networks of positive relationships--even with competitors--are essential.
(5) Companies must focus online technologies on core competencies while engaging noncore competencies only with extreme caution.

The research behind this book has been distilled into plain language and is presented with a commonsense approach to forging lasting e-commerce success. --Elizabeth Lewis

From the Back Cover

Avoid the mistakes of early movers and adapt the winning strategies of the profit-making leaders in today's global electronic marketplace. As The Search for Digital Excellence makes clear, you can't develop a smooth-running Web-based organization and business overnight. But you can significantly reduce the time it takes to do it by exploiting this book's dozens of detailed case studies, which cover large and small industries and spotlight the lessons learned by today's E-commerce pioneers. You'll shorten your Web-based technology learning curve when you see how: Marshall Industries and MCA/Universal took different but equally valid approaches to implementing E-commerce; Silicon Graphics uses a highly distributed intranet to improve communication, workflow, and collaborations, and to reduce cycle times; Bank of America's experimental approach to implementing Internet-EDI contrasts with McKesson Corporation's rapid application development; Ford Motor Company's global internetworking initiative helps to shorten new car development times and customize products for specific markets; CyberGold and Inktomi employ Web-based technologies to build lasting ties to customers and partners; Boeing and Fruit of the Loom have forged cost-effective electronic links to suppliers and distributors; Onsale and Virtual Vineyards have become dynamic virtual organizations and have established vibrant, novel marketspaces. Your firm's future success lies in its ability to develop a consumer-based, Web-centric operation quickly and efficiently. The Search for Digital Excellence enables you to do both, by highlighting the model companies that have made this crucial transformation.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070270570
• ISBN-13: 978-0070270572
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,627,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jim Ware is a former Harvard Business School professor who has spent his entire career helping clients invent their own futures by exploring and interpreting the changing nature of work, the workforce, and the workplace. He facilitates conversations and collaborative learning, builds scenarios of alternative futures, and transforms ideas and insights into bottom-line results.

He is currently the founder and Executive Director of The Future of Work...unlimited. He also serves as Global Research Director for Occupiers Journal Ltd., and is a Partner with The FutureWork Forum.

Previously, Jim held senior management positions at several leading-edge professional services firms, including KPMG (now Bearing Point), Computer Sciences Corporation, Unisys Corporation's Information Services Group, and The Concours Group, where he led a number of futures investigations and served as Executive Director of the HR Concours, a membership organization limited to Chief HR Officers.

Jim is the author of the chapter on change management for the recently-published IFMA Foundation book Work on the Move, (October 2011). He was a co-author and the lead editor for Cut It Out! Save for Today, Build for Tomorrow, published by the IFMA Foundation in 2009.

Corporate Agility (2007), co-authored with Charles Grantham and Cory Williamson, addresses the need for organizations to coordinate and integrate HR, IT, and CRE/facilities to develop new business capabilities for competing in a flat, global economy. Corporate Agility was named one of the ten best business books of 2007.

Jim is also Editor in Chief and a principal writer for the monthly newsletter Future of Work Agenda and posts regularly on the Future of Work blog.

He holds PhD, M.A., and B.Sc. degrees from Cornell University and an MBA (With Distinction) from the Harvard Business School. He lives and works in Berkeley, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay book, December 7, 1999

By 

Elmer Alex (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Search for Digital Excellence (Hardcover)

I used this book for class. I thought this book was good but it kind of rambled at times. Very informative though. Good source of info for people embarking on e-commerce.