Executive's Guide to E-Business: From Tactics to Strategy (Hardcover)

~ Martin V. Deise (Author), Conrad Nowikow (Author), Patrick King (Author), Amy Wright (Author), PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (Author), PricewaterhouseCoopers (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Is E-Business Helping You—Or Your Competitors?

E-business is transforming the commercial landscape and completely redefining traditional business assumptions. In an e-nabled world:

• Customers demand personalized, intimate relationships resulting in new levels of transaction simplicity and service value. Companies use the Internet to expand into new markets and grow.
• Products and services are designed for e-sales and customer segmentation. Companies package their most strategic asset—institutional knowledge—and bundle information with products and services to create new value for customers.
• Business processes seamlessly integrate with customers and business partners as companies build value networks, focus on their core competencies, and outsource non-core business components.
• Organizational structures are aligned to clarify internal governance for e-business. Process-oriented measures maximize the worth of information velocity in the value network.
• Systems and technologies utilize the Internet for most interactions between customers and business partners. Rapidly developing and maturing e-business applications make the Internet the place to do business.
• People and culture are transformed as work forces embrace the value of partnering and external relationships and employee knowledge equates to service value.

In Executive’s Guide to E-Business: From Tactics to Strategy, PricewaterhouseCoopers professionals present a new model that all executives and managers involved in an e-business undertaking can use to prepare for the challenges of disruptive change, to foster communication and understanding throughout their organizations, and to achieve sustained competitive advantage. In doing so, they reveal the B2B e-business tactics and strategies used by successful companies worldwide to significantly boost performance and substantially improve market share.

With information applicable to a wide range of industries, Executive’s Guide to E-Business will help any company take its rightful place in the e-nabled world and reap the tremendous benefits of the e-business revolution.

From the Inside Flap

Today, executives and managers who still view e-business as a passing fad or only as a vision of the future risk being left behind. Clearly, e-business is here now and here to stay. E-business once belonged solely to aggressive start-ups that grabbed market share by positioning themselves between traditional companies and their customers. Increasingly, traditional companies are waking up and fighting back by using e-business to leapfrog the competition and achieve sustained competitive advantage.

While much attention has been given to the business-to-consumer (B2C) aspect of e-business, the business-to-business (B2B) component is what twenty-first-century executives need to understand to win over the long term. Companies that successfully integrate e-business into their strategies are held in higher regard by the financial markets and generate greater shareholder value than those that do not. The growing number of high-profile e-business success stories offers indisputable evidence of the benefits of online business savvy. Todays and tomorrows e-xecutives need to know how they can achieve similar results.

Written by PricewaterhouseCoopers professionals, Executives Guide to E-Business: From Tactics to Strategy offers a new model that prepares you to implement the changes necessary to guide your company through the dynamic e-business panorama. Perhaps for the first time, this model provides a holistic view of e-business, placing all of the key issues within a simple, understandable framework. Further, it clarifies the e-business positions a company can occupy and presents a detailed analysis of the benefits, pitfalls, technologies, and implications of each. The authors guide you through four e-business snapshots: channel enhancement, value chain integration, industry transformation, and convergence. Along the way, they provide answers to the many questions, both basic and complex, currently facing executives.

Questions such as:

• What e-business position should I hold, and how fast should I move?
• How do I best use e-nabling technologies for competitive advantage?
• How will e-business affect my companys organization, people, processes, and technology?
• How do I forge and then structure the strategic partnerships I will need to satisfy customers who expect far more than in the past?

Both accessible and comprehensive, this indispensable book will also show you how to manage risk in the e-business environment and how to prepare your company to take its place among the fully e-nabled extraprises—extended enterprises consisting of companies and their value chain partners—that will define the e-business landscape of the future.

Whether your goal is to explore the fast-moving panorama of the e-business world or to formulate a winning e-business strategy, this book will help you chart a course for e-business success and show you how to leverage this powerful force to achieve competitive excellence.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (May 24, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471376396
• ISBN-13: 978-0471376392
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,404,905 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep E-Commerce MasterGuide, November 25, 2000

By	Prof David T Wright (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews

Aimed at senior executives, `E-Business' offers a mature look at
the competitive e-landscape, business models and e-commerce approaches
based upon 100s of PWC engagements.

The well structured &
illustrated, unreferenced chapters span: a new business model (neither
hierarchical nor discrete steps); channel enhancement (value
propositions for seller and buyers); channel enhancement impacts
(organizations, people, processes and technology); value chain
integration (supply and customer networks); value chain integration
impacts (organizations, people, processes and technology); industry
transformation (physcho or knowco, infrastructure, partnering,
issues); industry transformation impacts (organizations, people,
processes and technology); convergence (speed, strategies);
convergence impacts (organizations, people); managing risk; navigating
change; analytical framework; and a detailed view of e-nabled value
chain.

Strengths include: the great structure, illustrations, tables
and sidebars; the intelligent, thoughtful, deep writing style; the
depth and breath of useful content (for executives to operational
staff); and the frequent useful charts linking business objectives, to
success factors to enablers.

Weakness include: the lack of
references (we must take the authors' words for credibility of
content!); the lack of case study or success story anecdotes to liven
up the sometimes dryness of subject; slightly prescriptive tone; and a
lack of "interactivity" exercises for the reader.

Other
alternatives/companion texts in this area include: May's technical
focus `The Business of E-Commerce' (ISBN 052177698); Hoque's
opinionated `E-Enterprise' (ISBN: 052177487X); Cohan's draft review
of `e-Profit' (ISBN 0814405444); Siegel's glossy brainstorms in
`Futurize Your Enterprize'(0471357634); and Bloor's marketplace
spin in `electronic B@zaar' (ISBN185788258X).

Overall,
definitely one of the better books in this area, just needing more
science/alternative sources, and case studies to support your
e-business change projects/ enterprises.

41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Expand your horizons, May 24, 2000

By	Alex Proimos (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Executive's guide to E-Business, clearly illustrates what strategies are neccessary to take advantage and profit of the internet's exploding growth. The book provides those in business, information on how to build relationships with the companies stakeholders, buy using the lastest technologies. The writers of this book are all from PricewaterhouseCoopers and their experience shines throughout the book, in providing priceless information on how business can excel in the world's changing environment. As a frequent reader of E-Business/Commerce books, I strongly recommend this book to those who are serious about the "E" (R)evolution.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Non-Impressive, January 30, 2001

By	John B. Vuu (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews

I felt the entire book was one big sales pitch. It felt like I was sitting in on a sales presentation. Although the authors did a fairly good job of outlining the 4 stages of the e-business panorama, they neglected to provide solid case studies or real life examples. Instead, I kept coming across recurring messages throughout the book; "all businesses will become ebusiness ...focus on your company's core competency, outsource your non-core competence in order to go to market fast...seamless backend application integration"... very basic stuff. If you are already familiar with ebusiness, this book will bore your as it did me after the first 3 chapters.

I like to suggest a more objective book on ebusiness with better tactics and strategies: "e-Business Roadmap for Success" by, Dr. Ravi Kalakota