The Seven Steps to Nirvana: Strategic Insights into eBusiness Transformation (Hardcover)

by Mohanbir S. Sawhney (Author), Jeff Zabin (Author), Don Tapscott (Foreword) "WE LOOK AT THE WORLD through lenses..." (more)
Key Phrases: customer relationship repository, hybrid channel designs, sequential information transfer, Herman Miller, Bank One, Boeing Ventures (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
While some might find the title's promise of transcendental beatitude a trifle overreaching, The Seven Steps to Nirvana nonetheless provides some excellent insight into the design and implementation of an e-business game plan at "low-tech, smokestack" companies that have heretofore shied away from cyber-strategies. Mohan Sawhney, the McCormick Tribune Professor of Electronic Commerce and Technology at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and Jeff Zabin, a consultant, writer, and speaker, have produced a thought-provoking yet practical entry point for senior managers and other leaders at these firms. The book progresses from creating an overarching initial vision and initiating other critical preliminary preparations to "putting your money where your mouth is, and getting people in the organization to embrace the oft-threatening new world of e-business." Particularly notable are sections on "thinking like an architect (to) open your mind to new possibilities for business innovation" and mitigating channel conflict--or "dissension among the existing institutions"--by making sure the electronic enhancements you are about to append are truly synchronized complements to what you already have. The ideas behind it all are solid and, perhaps most commendably, are anchored to the needs of a real-world customer base. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly
Although sometimes hyperbolic, Sawhney, an influential professor at Northwestern's business school, and co-writer Zabin provide a comprehensive conceptual framework for conducting e-business that sets their effort apart from the summer's many similar books. Targeting senior management, the authors outline their seven steps (vision, evolution, strategy, synchronization, infrastructure, capitalization and organization) for leveraging a company's advantages.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 323 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies (April 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071375228
• ISBN-13: 978-0071375221
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,486,828 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "General Principle" (that anyone can say) Book, April 29, 2001

By	Hiroo Yamagata (Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book came out at a difficult time, when NASDAQ fell and people realized that buying shares of firms that don't turn a profit isn't a good idea after all. So, this book tries to start off by saying that "Ah, we knew that all along!" and then trying to sell the existing industries the IT gospel.

That's a hard position to maintain, and I think the book suffers from it. It resorts to saying that use of IT is crucial for existing firms, but the thing it offers is almost exactly the type of things that were touted in the pre-Internet days, where Toyoda excelled with JIT systems, Kao used their IT advantage, 7-11 improved logistics by streamlining their suppliers... in short, what people used to call "strategic use of information systems" in those days.

So, after all these Internet things, we're back to where we were 10 years ago, and the authors try to make it sound new, but it isn't.

Another problem is their style. The authors says that in order to prevent the book from becoming outdated within a month, they have avoided placing case studies, and focused on the philosophy. But, this makes the whole book into a collection of general ideas, things that anyone can say, things you already read in Harvard Business Review or Businessweek a hundred times. They resort to a lot of quotes from zen or Buddha, or some folk story to make themselves sound profound. I don't know how it reads to an American, but for a Japanese like me, they stink. Since they don't site actual cases, they use only tiny newsbits to illustrate the point, and you really don't get the whole picture. They say things like, "When firm A uses US $3 billion for purchases, if IT can reduce that cost by only 1%, that's significant!" but they never show whether that 1% saving is likely to happen!!

I also have to question their competence in judging technology, They claim that Sega dropped out of the game console business, because their Dreamcast console didn't adopt DVD. I seriously doubt that. Show me a game that uses the full capacity of DVD effectively. I don't think the authors understand the game console market, or the relation between technology and the market acceptance.

Nice try, and there are some interesting points in the book. Also, my general disapproval of these management guides probably have a lot to do with this not-so-good review. But I can't say I'm very happy with this book.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ditto: Hiroo Yamagata, August 9, 2001

By A Customer

I'm an American and I too confirm Mr. Yamagata's review: the "quotes from zen or Buddha, or some folk story to make themselves sound profound" is highly irritating (straight talk will do just fine)... and, "Ah,we knew that all along!" borders on arrogance. The book seems to have come from the -publish or perish- world of academe. Need solid information to do the real work ahead, don't look for Nirvana. Sorry, but I could find no new insights from this book, just a contrived rehash of information clearly written elsewhere --in business language, backed by well defended assertions ... my $2 mantra is just fine, thank you.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New book addresses e-business for old economy companies, May 30, 2001

By	Madanmohan Rao (Bangalore, India) - See all my reviews

The Seven Steps to Nirvana: Strategic Insights Into e-Business Transformation

by Mohan Sawhney and Jeff Zabin

Review by Madanmohan Rao...

With a foreword by Dan Tapscott (author of “Digital Capital” and “Growing Up Digital”), this concise e-business guidebook is just what serious readers need in the “post-dotcom era” to sift through the confusing views and assessments of e-business out there.

Mohan Sawhney, e-commerce professor at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Northwestern University, is a prolific writer and speaker and serves on the boards of several startups; he was a keynote speaker at the India Internet World 2000 conference... Jeff Zabin is a writer and research fellow with strategy firm Diamond Cluster International in Evanston, Illinois.

The book also has an online companion... Referenced books include Leading the Revolution (by Gary Hamel), Intellectual Capital (Thomas Stewart), MetaCapitalism (Grady Means), ValueNets (David Bovet), and Enterprise E-Commerce (Peter Fingar).

The focus of the book by Sawhney and Zabin is more on the traditional old-economy “smokestack” industries than established technology players like Cisco and Dell. It is chock-full of case studies and anecdotes of successes as well as failures in e-business ventures of corporate America.

One chapter each is devoted to the seven steps which businesses must take in order to maximize e-business potential: broaden company and industry vision, chart incremental moves down the e-business evolution path, devise clever e-strategy, synchronise channels and internal departments, gear up e-infrastructure platforms, judiciously allocate financial resources and investments, and rally employees and partners around the e-business banner.

In retrospect, it might be said that the new economy was the best thing to have happened to the old economy, according to the authors, especially the shining examples they set for speed, innovation and pure adrenaline flow. “Unlike anything before it, the massive wave of entrepreneurial startups energized Corporate America to change,” they observe.

E-business can play a key role in four ways: cost reduction, revenue expansion, time reduction, and relationship enhancement. E-business plays not just to the bottom line but also to the top line, where it can lead to the transformation and reinvention of entire industries.

Companies like United Technologies and Eastman streamline purchasing via e-procurement. Citibank leverages CRM for online initiatives, and Proctor&Gamble uses Web sites to improve information services quality for its products like Tide, Crest and Vick’s. Xerox harnesses the Web to lubricate its relationships with its numerous resellers. Consultancy firms and Fortune 500 innovators like GE use Intranet-based knowledge management systems to capture, codify and recycle the learnings gleaned from every project and every employee.

One of the key impacts of the Internet, Intranet and Extranet is to break down traditional barriers within the company between its departments, geographical units and employees, and on the outside to connect the company seamlessly with its customers, suppliers, distributors and business partners.

Companies have taken different approaches to achieve this synchronous state: for instance, Wal-Mart has named its online venture WalMart.com and opted for deep synchronization and integration, whereas K-Mart has called its online venture BlueLight.com which is synchronized at a selective level and is aimed at new customers with new offerings.

The Net has multiple effects on channels and brands: channel augmentation (eg. direct selling by Cisco and Dell), brand augmentation (eg. Web sites of Ragu sauce and Crest toothpaste), channel proliferation (eg. book sales), and channel deconstruction (eg. Travelocity and Expedia).

The vendor landscape – which is experiencing rapid convergence -- includes players in MRO procurement (Ariba, CommerceOne), SCM (i2, Manugistics), collaborative design (Agile, NexPrise), content and catalogue management (Vignette), configurators (Trilogy), integrated marketplaces (Ariba, CommerceOne, Oracle, VerticalNet), direct sales (BroadVision, Intershop, OpenMarket), logistics (i2, Yantra, GoCargo), payment (Verisign, iEscrow), CRM (Siebel, Kana) and customer analytics (E.piphany, Cognos).

“Despite the unbridled enthusiasm for the Net as a channel for direct selling to customers that besets many companies, the fact remains that most selling still takes place through partners,” according to Sawhney and Zabin.

The future, according to the authors, lies in collaborative commerce via component-based architectures (as with HP’s e-Speak and Microsoft’s BizTalk) – eventually creating ‘business operating systems’ for entire industries, such as Covisint in the automobile industry, Exostar for aerospace, Transora for consumer packaged goods, and Elemica for chemicals.

Due to a combination of fear and greed, many established players may have swung off course for some time on the investment front: such as Starbucks (which invested in Living.com, Kozmo.com, Cooking.com and TalkCity – but has re-focused now) and Nordstrom (which took a $20 million loss on Streamline.com).

By investing in other start-ups, companies can gain access to “windows into the future, borrowing eyes and ideas from innovative entrepreneurs.” Examples include Kraft Foods, which gained valuable learnings (if not earnings) about online impacts on grocery shopping via tie-ups with Webvan, NetGrocer, Peapod, Food.com and EthnicGrocer.com. Accenture Technology Ventures has invested in Asera, Jamcracker, Rivio and MarketSwitch.

CEOs, CIOs and heads of operating units within a company have a key role to play in catalyzing, motivating, skilling and externalizing of e-business vision and capability. Notable leaders in this regard have included GE CEO Jack Welch, Boeing CEO Phil Condit, Eastman CEO Ernest Davenport, and McDonald’s CEO Jack Greenberg.

The ultimate compass in the e-business journey, the authors conclude, has to be nothing other than the customer value proposition...