Making the E-Business Transformation Book Review

Making the E-Business Transformation is a book created by Peter Gloor who is a partner with Deloitte Consulting in Zurich, Switzerland. There at Deloitte's he is the leading e-business initiative for Europe. He is also the vice president in the IT department of Union Bank of Switzerland as well as an adjunct faculty at Dartmouth College. (Gloor 2000). Gloor's accomplishments are well respected and I feel is what helps enable him to write such a book. In the start of the book there is a quote about the overall goal of the book.

"e-Business and e-commerce is a revolution driven by IT. While computers and computer networks have been around for the last 50 years it is only in the last five that they have found their way into everyday life. This book shows you how to harness the power of the new technologies to transform your business into an e-business company which will succeed in the e-commerce economy."

This quote basically prepares a business to recognize that although they have been using computers as a business tool for the past 50 years that now it is time to use the computer as no longer as just a business tool but rather a business in of itself.

At the Introduction of the book Peter goes into why e-business is the next big revolution in business and society. He explains that computers are not just a commodity anymore and that they are evolving into items we use as everyday items. He compares the computer to television and how computer outreach accomplished 50 million users in just four years whereas it took television thirteen years to accomplish that. In the introduction Peter also explains briefly how you would go about changing into an e-business company. According to him there are two ways of adopting e-business. One is a bottom-up e-business transformation in which a company can automate its existing business processes by using e-business technologies such as document management, workflow systems, and tools for collaboration or packageware. The different types of these technologies are listed later. The second way he says would be a top-down approach. In the top-down approach the company would fully embrace the new Internet-based economy, question its current strategy, and come up with new digital business models. This would enable the company to link to its outsourcing providers. Lastly in the introduction Peter touches on key enabling technologies that will help on the way. These technologies are based on how well the IT environment flows. He says the IT environment over the past has started leaning towards software packages. This is essential to building customer loyalty, reaching new markets, creating new products and services, enhancing human capital and managing risk because custom-built client/server applications in languages such as COBOL, C, Pascal and FoxPro have proven successful.

BOOK INTRODUCTION OPINION

I feel that the introduction is just that, an introduction. He touches on some things but does not get too detailed because he has assigned chapters to explain further. I think the introduction was successful in providing the right amount of information to pull in the business to read further. However where I think the introduction failed was to explain some lingo involved with online functions. A beginning business might not know what packageware, IT, or even what the basic lingos like e-business and e-commerce are. My advice to further make this introduction a success would be to contain a vocabulary table to help the reader familiarize themselves with the terms then when they read the introduction they will be able to know what is to come later in the book. The reader shouldn't have to read further into the book in order to understand what he/she is going to read. They should be able to go into a chapter and understand what they are going to read already but read further in order to understand how it functions.

DISSPELLING OF E-BUSINESS MYTHS

The following step that Peter goes into is establishing a strong reassurance by dispelling the myths of e-business. By myths its meant things such as associated global dissemination of the Internet and challenges of opportunities of e-business for society, business and the individual. He tackles this problem by showing different ways that computers aid in not only business but also human life. He explains how computers are used by farmers to help lower production costs by managing calculation systems and without that they will lose to more flexible competitors. He compares the computer to the steam engine, railroad, car, telephone and television in that it has changed the way we function and so fear in embracing it should be dispelled. This chapter he talks about how e-business and computers are closing the developing world gap and bringing the world closer to the first genuine global market. He also points out things like the UN Trade Point Program of 1992 that assists small and medium sized businesses overcome the informational, financial, and logistic obstacles in order to increase participation in international trade. The goal of the Trade Point Program is to enable small and medium sized businesses to use the internet and services such as EDI or Web homepages to gain access to computerized information on markets, potential clients and potential investors, tariffs and trade rules world-wide. This is looked at as being a one-stop-shopping that should lower transaction costs of importing and exporting as well as encouraging new entrants into the trade arena. Another myth that Peter reveals is the myth that e-business will square out the bell curve and make the rich richer and the poor poorer. He explains that this is the complete opposite. E-business in fact opens the doorway to the poor. They can now obtain the high levels of access that made the rich, rich. And they can access this all without the high costs. Now more than ever small and medium sized businesses can expand their products across the globe though the computer, an accomplishment only don't in the past by large companies. One big concern was that e-business kills emotional intelligence by disguising any personality flaws one might have. Peter actually agrees with this. Doing business online does hide any flaws someone might have in his/her personality but he counters that by saying emotional intelligence does not correspond with high computer skills. If you are doing business or working with an individual then you are looking at his computer intelligence in that field and not his emotional intelligence. He also shows that just because you work on the computer does not mean there is a lack of emotional intelligence. Why? Because the companies that are the most successful to date are the ones that tapped into human emotions such as online dating, communication and