Customer Reviews

The eProcess Edge: Creating Customer Value & Business in the Internet Era

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

eCommerce has both blinded and charmed many business people into focusing on the wrong issues and actions for their companies, customers, and investors. Fewer than 20 eBusinesses have achieved consistent eCommerce profitability, and created real customer value.

There are very few worthy how-to books about eCommerce. Customers.com is one such book. However, many other books adopt a "white ivory tower" mentality that fails to explain the nuts and bolts of the eCommerce explosion, and fewer even give clear guidelines on becoming successful in eCommerce

What book should you read to understand the what's and how's of eCommerce?

The eProcess Edge is a must-read for managers (technical and non-technical), C-level officers, consultants, academics, and industry analysts. It is useful to both professionals, and anyone who wants to be a well-informed online customer and potential investor of eBusinesses.

The eProcess framework offers logical and compelling analyses of eCommerce success and failures for the past 5 years, and is based on the lessons learned from a large sample size (80+) of companies across different industries to support its reasonings.

Keen and McDonald provide strong inferential arguments for the importance in eCommerce of: - commerce fundamentals - relationships building - business process excellence - collaborative value networks - electronic interfaces - capabilities sourcing - customer experience.

Technology does not provide all the answers. The integration of people, process and technology is necessary to achieve the eProcess edge for high customer value, and high company profitability.

This is a very practical book. It offfers many lessons-learned, and recommends specific actions. It addresses the challenges and issues for both pure-online only, and traditional "bricks and mortar" companies. It leverages the expertise and insights of two veteran eCommerce experts - backed by the research, analyses, real-world experiences, and talents of their respective companies (Keen Innovations, Andersen Consulting).

This book has three key lessons: (1) business models visibly matter a heck of a lot more now than they perhaps did before, (2) excellence in leading e-businesses comes from thier processes and intangible assets of that nature, not flashy Web sites or overweight bank accounts (capital assets), (3) relationship capital makes or breaks an e-Business. The key lesson that I took away from this book was that the Silver Bullet for e-Business success lies in the journey--the process--and those who recognize that can build thier own inimitable silver bullets.

This book is not for those looking for a "formula" or Silver Bullet for e-commerce success. It is for those who realize that the quest for Silver Bullet-like formulas is for those who seek to imitate, not innovate. If anything, once-successful B2C businesses that have been closing down since this past Christmas season should teach us a lesson that little is gained from imitation. Process excellence is what differentiates in the end, and that needs deep understanding of your own business models, and knowledge of your markets. Although the authors do not directly refer to it, the role of knowledge management surfaces implicitly throughout thier discussion ("first learner advantage"). While the authors dicuss e-commerce, much of what this book has to offer is also applicable to e-Business.

This is the kind of business book that comes once every few years, and the one that's best bought in hardcover because of the extent to which I'll probably refer to it. This book is not meant to provide you the right answers, but it will help you ask the right questions. The beauty of this volume is that it describes fundamental, timeless concepts that will remain the same even when the next wave of technology emerges. In my opinion, a few comparative tables and the discussion of Schwab and FedEx alone are worth the cost of this book.

Very highly recommended.

Execution matters! The eProcess Edge enables businesses - both start ups and established companies - to move from Internet innovation to eProcess execution.

It is designed to help professionals prioritize, coordinate, and implement electronic commerce processes. Targeting key relationships is addressed and building a value network as a basis for organizing and competing is covered in detail. If you aim to manage an eCommerce business successfully, the tools provided in this book will be helpful. For example, Keen and McDonald offer an 'eProcess capability matrix' that guides appropriate operational sourcing of capabilities.

Managers, technology decision-makers, and academics that want to understand exactly how processes and capabilities may be improved to gain competitive advantage must read this book.

I found the eProcess Edge after a long search for guideance on making business decisions related to eCommerce. I do not work for a dot com and needed a way to make eCommerce real after all of the hype.

I have read Customers.com/NetWorth/NetGain/Killer App/eCommerce Stratgegy and many others. I found many of them good in concept but lacking in a grounding in reality. Not this book. It gets down to the business of eBusiness in terms that tell me how to make money in eCommerce. As the first chapter said its now time to "execute or die" and this book gives you the ideas to thrive in the post internet hype world.

The first chapter talks about the economic realiies of eCommerce. This really showed me how to pick the parts of my business that would benefit most from eCommerce. This helped me zero in on where to place my bets.

The book takes an interesting idea of looking at relationships between customers, trading partners and other parties. This view is vendor neutral -- they are not hyping a particular software product or idea. This view is different from the "IT intiiative" view where projects are defined by internal forces. It helped me recognize that eCommerce is more than just a technology, rather it is a new approach to business.

Relationships also opened my mind on how to structure my online/web experiences. How much did I have to provide to customers and trading partners? What did I want them to do? What did I need to provide?

These questions are structured into a series of worksheets and matricies with examples of how you make these decisions. I found this very helpful in bringing some reality to the table. Many books say "be customer centric" this book helps you understand what that means in real terms !

Latter chapters talked about how to organize the business for ecommerce, who to "source" processes through, and how to make these channels work with others. The Channel Harmonization part is particularly helpful as most people talk about failures (Channel conflict) and tell you to avoid this without providing avoidance strategies. This book tells you how.

To wrap up the book talks about how you manage eCommerce channels and an eCommerece business -- something I found no where else !

This book is one I see using as part of my eCommerce business. It is full of practical stuff that makes good business sense, rather than just fuels the fire.

Now that the internet bubble is over, this is one of the few books -- the only one so far -- that talks about how real business is done over the interent.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is going to make investments in their business for eCommerce.

Some books about business explain the emerging critical concepts of the day. Other books about business teach the details of implementation for a new technology. It is very rare to find one book that does both. E-Process Edge does both. It covers the new world of E-commerce at the conceptual level. It also provides a wealth of practical how-to material on how to apply the new concepts in a particular situation. This is one book that should be read by both executive management and the e-commerce project team.

Carl Longnecker Visiting Executive Loyola Graduate School of Business

Alas, a fresh, pragmatic look at eCommerce. With so much written about eCommerce strategy, positioning, and vision, it is refreshing to find a book that focuses on how companies can build their eCommerce capabilities. The eProcess Edge fills the gap between knowing about eCommerce and taking the actions required for realizing success. It is obvious that this book is based on a wealth of experience and success in working with eCommerce. Keen and McDonald present several powerful ideas, including the idea of clearly defining business rules so that they may be embedded in user interfaces, thus allowing for optimal sourcing of business processes.

Keen and McDonald do a great job in addressing issues that companies face in the "Internet Era." The text is well organized and emphasizes the fact that companies do need to focus on their customers and their processes. Their chapters on "out-tasking" and "in-sourcing" are helpful for those not familiar with these concepts. Additionally, the book helps "executive" types really understand the concept of "embedding" rules within a software interface. The chapters that focus on web "touch and texture" and value networks are also insightful. I believe that they did a great job in addressing "process."

However, like many of these types of books, it's written in "consultant" speak aka "Accenture" or "Andersen" speak. It lacks details and quite frankly that is where the devil can be found. The book provides limited examples of successful eCommerce implementations. Believe it or not, Amazon and National Semiconductor are not the only companies that have successfully performed eCommerce implementations. If your looking for technical details this is NOT the book for you. Additionally, the writing is a bit wordy. There are more than one sentence where authors use "thus, that" and other odd gramatical constructs. With better editing, I am sure that the book could have been made a little easier to read.

This a great read to learn more about strategy and process, but be prepared to "wade" through the jargon.

In plain English, this book defines eProcess and how a company can use it to it's advantage. This book is littered with real-world examples and is absent of technology-babble. Furthermore, the examples also show how the absence -- or lack of -- eProcess negativley impacts a businesses performance.

I have a great understanding of the overall theory of eProcess and why a company MUST have one to survive in the eCommerce world in which we live.

Alas, a fresh, pragmatic look at eCommerce. With so written about eCommerce strategy, positioning, and vision, it is refreshing to find a book that focuses on how companies can build their eCommerce capabilities. The eProcess Edge fills the gap between knowing about eCommerce and taking the actions required for realizing success. It is obvious that this book is based on a wealth of experience and success in working with eCommerce. Keen and McDonald present several powerful ideas, including the idea of clearly defining business rules so that they may be embedded in user interfaces, thus allowing for optimal sourcing of business processes.

This is probably the best book on the market today for telling you what is important to get right as you work to transform your company from a pure bricks and mortar to one that leverages the promise of the internet. No magic included; just a blueprint for the hard work ahead. For the executive who felt a web site and mouse was all it took, Keen and McDonald describe the strategy, process and what is required to change behind the click of the mouse if you want to leverage the revenue growth, cost reduction and shareholder value of the internet. A must read for anyone comptemplating the journey.