e-Business 2.0: Roadmap for Success (2nd Edition)

Amazon.com

In e-Business 2.0, Ravi Kalakota and Marcia Robinson present a survey of how the processes of business have changed as a result of computer-assisted communications, data storage, and data analysis. They explain recent technological advances--and those that may take place in the near and middle future--and explain how companies that sell products and services might put them to profitable use. With an emphasis on companies that sell things to large numbers of consumers, the authors argue convincingly that information technology isn't an end in itself, but a tool that can facilitate valuable changes in business processes.

This is a book for managers and organizational planners, but it commits none of the sins typical of such books. It neither oversimplifies technical matters nor serves as a mere platform for catchy phrases and obtuse illustrations. e-Business 2.0 is properly focused on the big technologies on which successful companies will capitalize. Kalakota and Robinson argue that it's a good idea to supplement live salespeople with self-service sales facilities, such as those on a Web site. They call this a part of selling-chain management.

The authors also explain how inefficiencies in the selling chain can make it prohibitively expensive to provide built-to-order products, which consumers increasingly want. They then present solutions: Internet and customer relationship management (IRM and CRM) software, sales automation systems, and proposal-automation tools. In each case, they cite specific examples (usually companies and products), enabling readers to dig deeper into specifics if they want. Similar attention goes to enterprise resource planning (ERP), trend-spotting tools, and half a dozen other technologies. Read this guide as you think about how to make strategic changes in your company's operating practices. --David Wall

Topics covered: Recent developments in technology that change the way companies do business, particularly in terms of determining and fulfilling customers' needs and interacting smoothly with vendors. More broadly, this book deals with sharing information efficiently among all relevant parties inside and outside an organization. Technologies covered: Internet sales infrastructures, customer relationship management (CRM) suites, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, knowledge management tools, and data warehousing and analysis products.

Book Description

Shows how e-commerce has evolved into e-business, identifying 20 key e-business trends that prevail in today's economy. Reveals how managers are changing their strategies and the structure of their organizations to take advantage of the benefits of e-commerce and e-business. Previous edition: c1999. DLC: Electronic commerce.

Customer Reviews:

A bit long winded & pretentious but still valuable.......2007-01-20

I came at this book from the point of view of a web designer. It is, unfortunately for me, written more for the business person (ie: divisional manager / executive within a mid to large sized company). It argues quite convincingly that the various applications & systems within a business need to be integrated for it have be a successful ecommerce presence. However it gives no technical insight into how this is to be achieved. The authors simply drop names of companies that provide software that can do whatever function they are talking about in that chapter. (Or at least, companies who were doing this several years ago, when the book was published. The book is really is a bit old now to be completely relevant on the topic of the present business environment).

I get the feeling that an executive or divisional manager reading this book would not understand half of what the authors are talking about. At least that has been my experience with business people at this level. They really don't have much of a grasp of the working of websites, or of software applications generally for that matter. They simply leave it all for their IT department to take care of.

From my experience, most execs reading this book would just be looking to be able to pick up enough of the jargon to be able to sound like they know what they are talking about. Customer relationshiop management, supply chain management, front office, back office, etc, etc... I think the book achieves this result. Perhaps that is why it had such hype around it. However the authors could have written a much slimmer book & achieved the same aim. They ramble on at length about the significance of each issue before actually broaching it. I don't know how many times a sentence like "the company that fails to do this will soon be left behind!" is used in each chapter. After a while, it starts to get a little ridiculous.

There is alot of rhetoric, which you eventually just start to switch off to, & look for the next actual point to arrive. (Fortunately, the points themselves are quite engaging).

There is also a section at the end of each chapter called "memo to the CEO". This revises what was dealt with in the chapter. I just found this "memo to the ceo" scenario kind of ridiculous too. It seems to suggest that only CEOs are going to be reading the book. Memo to AUTHORs, isn't that limiting your readership somewhat to assume this? Or to shape the material in this way? What about addressing us mere mortals too. We paid our money at the bookstore counter too!

Despite the heavy-handed prose (a bit of sensible editing would have done wonders for the flavour of the book) it is an interesting theoretical study of what ecommerce SHOULD be about. I would recommend it on this basis.

The book is basically about apllications integration, & how this can lead to cost savings (for the company) plus better experiences for customers. They can do more, faster, at lower cost, & with greater quality assurance.

It is interesting, reading it now, to see some things the authors mention have become the norm in ecommerce today. So they were clearly right on the general significance of this issue of integration.

You just have to switch off to the grandiose nature of their style occasionally. It really seems akin to an Anthony Robbins book at times ("You can do it! You can be the best. If you choose to succeed. But you must act. Many will fail. Will you be one of them?" etc, etc) I am exaggerating there, but if you read the book you will see what I mean.

Lots of big words and no explanation of what they mean.......2005-04-09

After seeing all the glowing reviews of this book, I'm beginning to wonder if it's just me. I've only gotten through the first 3 chapters and already I've run into a multitude of terms that are not explained at all. My class uses this book for its text and I have to answer discussion questions about brand-intensive vs. capital intensive, disaggregation and reaggregation (Dictionary.com didn't even have 'reaggregation' in its database), etc. It sure would be nice to include a glossary of terms used. I'm really dreading the rest of this book.

Very insightful.......2004-02-07

This book still holds up rather well given all the changes that took place in the e-business space in the last couple of years.

The authors really seem to understand this space. I heard Ravi Kalakota speak at a seminar in Cincinati. He was fantastic. He is very articulate about the trends that are shaping the e-business and e-commerce landscape.

Highly recommend this book to those who want to understand the basics of e-business.

Techie vs. Business point of Review.......2002-08-21

I really liked this book. I am doing an MBA at the moment in the Michael Smurfit Business School and was trying to get an example for an eBusiness Model. The choice in the end came between Weil's Book 'Place and Space' and Kalakota's, but, there was no choice. Even though I have the greatest respect for Weil. Kalakota was pragmatic. At first as I staggered through the earlier chapters I thought, 'Hello' ... have you heard of dot.con ( we are talking about techie stuff...)and then it clicked , literally , this guy , or should I say lady and gent, have it all sussed. All eBusiness models should be based on sound business principles.
'e' has changed the principles but it is still the same message. Incorporate and get on with it. That's the message and do it as soon as possible. That's the reality! Business has not changed, just the tools, and the speed ...But beware once you do it, you have to keep on doing it, to come out on tops, it'a a reiterative cycle, OK babe...

A good text, a powerful understanding........2002-07-12

I read this for as a text for a course in ECommerce and I enjoyed the candid dialogue that the author used in this book. The examples and ideas are not outdated. Not a how to book, but more of a these are the main business concepts and opportunities you can benefit from, book.

Really enjoyed it.

Book Description

The Gilt-Edged Market is specifically aimed at finance professionals and investors who need to understand the inner working of the United Kingdom gilt market. There is detailed coverage of the different gilt instruments, as well as a look at the structures, institutions and practices of the market itself.

Topics include:
* Bond basics
* Conventional gilts
* Index-linked gilts
* Gilt strips
* The gilt repo market
* The gilt bond future basis
* Yield spread trading using gilts

There are also personal reminiscenes that illustrate the great changes that have occurred in this market since Big Bang, as well as an exposition on the art of trading.

The Gilt-Edged Market is ideal reading for traders, salespersons, fund managers, private investors and other professionals involved to any extent in the UK gilt market.

* The latest research on index-linked gilts, gilt markets and sterling debt markets presented in an enthusiastic, readable style
* Written by gilt-edged market makers and dealers to ensure realistic, practical coverage as well as a clear explanation of the theory, so readers gain from years' experience
* Foreword written by Mike Williams, CEO of the Debt Management Office

The Gilt-Edged Market (Studies in Financial Institutions and Markets)

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The Gilt-Edged Market (Studies in Financial Institutions and Markets)
Jeremy J. H. Wormell
Manufacturer: Unwin Hyman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Public Finance | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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INSIDE THE GILT-EDGED MARKET

Manufacturer: Woodhead-Faulkner Ltd. Cambridge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IA6AZQ

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Inside the Gilt-Edged Market.
Patrick Phillips
Manufacturer: Publisher Unknown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UXV1IM

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Inside the New Gilt-Edged Market
Patrick Phillips
Manufacturer: Woodhead-Faulkner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Public Finance | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Bonds | Investing | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0859413462

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Inside the Gilt-Edged Market.

Manufacturer: 0
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IBXLCK

Merrill Lynch Guide to the Gilt-edged and Sterling Bond Market

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Merrill Lynch Guide to the Gilt-edged and Sterling Bond Market
Patrick Phillips
Manufacturer: Book Guild Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Stocks | Investing | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1857760700

The outlook for the U.K. economy and the gilt edged market, 1984-85

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The outlook for the U.K. economy and the gilt edged market, 1984-85
H Carter
Manufacturer: Buckmaster & Moore
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Investing | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0007B2ZWI

Book Description

The Canadian army is in crisis. Its command structure is ineffective. Its soldiers are demoralized. Its equipment is outmoded and inadequate for many of the tasks to which it is assigned. The causes of the problem can be traced to a number of sources, including political indecision, peacetime neglect, and budgetary cutbacks. But, perhaps most crucially, the ability of the army to carry out its essential function, which is to maintain the capacity to fight wars, has been undermined by the process of bureaucratization initiated by passage of the Unification Act of 1968 and reinforced by later structural changes. This process has transformed and disfigured the military command structure at every level, from the Chief of Defence Staff to the so-called Hellyer corporal, with disastrous results.

The dreadful torture and murder of a teenager in Somalia was significant precisely because it showed how badly morale and discipline have deteriorated in Canada’s army. In Significant Incident, David Bercuson gives readers a rare inside look at the state of our armed forces. He draws on historical sources, leaked documents, material submitted to the Commission of Inquiry into the Somalia Affair, and on scores of exclusive interviews. He uses this material to describe today’s army, both on duty in Bosnia, for example, and on the home front. It is against this multifaceted background that the deterioration of a proud regiment, the Canadian Airborne, and its ill-fated mission to Somalia begins to make sense.

Significant Incident will be welcomed by soldiers, but will send shockwaves through the media, the military high command, and political circles.

Customer Reviews:

One of Bercuson's best military books.......2002-02-13

Bercuson has obviously used his past research to good effect in this volume (he even quotes one of the WWII Calgary Highlanders he interviewed for BATTALION OF HEROES early on in this one.) Bercuson demonstrates a solid grasp on the social and political history of the Canadian Army, tracing its roots to the middle ages, in an easy to read and well written book. This is not just a description of the murder committed in Somalia, but a detailed look at why the Army has come to be the way it is.

The military's role in Modern Canada.......2001-08-15

I'm a Yank, but I was in Somalia at the time the Somali was murdered. This book describes both the incident in good detail and the (disgraceful) disbanding of the CAR, but also addresses the larger issue of the role of the military in modern Canadian society. The author notes that with recent defense cutbacks and a deemphasizing of the old values and professionalism that had made Canada successful in battles like that of Vimy Ridge in WWI, that Canada may no longer seen, internationally, as a country deserving respect.

All of the author's points are well written and valid (and hopefully someone in Ottawa has read this book...), but I deducted a star because he does not mention the role that melafloquine, an anti-malarial drug that was taken in Somalia, may have played in the murder.

Book Description

On the afternoon of 7 June 1944, Lorne Brown, a private serving with the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division in Normandy, was bayoneted to death while trying to surrender to troops of Nazi Germany's Tlite 12th SS Division 'Hitler Youth.' Over the next ten days, more than a hundred and fifty Canadian soldiers were brutally murdered after capture by the 12th SS. Despite months of post-war investigation by Allied courts, however, only two senior officers of the 12th SS were ever tried for war crimes.

Drawing extensively on archival sources, Howard Margolian reveals the full account of an atrocious chapter in history and exposes the causes - an inept and indifferent Canadian military justice system, and a Canadian government all too willing to let bygones be bygones - of the flagrant inaction that followed. Highly praised for both its meticulous research and its engaging passion, this book will resonate with veterans, those interested in war crimes, military buffs, and historians.

Customer Reviews:

WOW! What a great and complete history book.......2007-09-06

I read this one eagerly. As a Canadian I always had heard about the executions of Canadian POWs in Normandy by the SS. By reading this very detailed and well researched book I understood what happened right from the time of the invasion all the way through the post-war trails.
I really recommend this book!

An excellent and well-researched book.......2001-09-09

Howard Margolian's book is a well-written and -researched book that explores the conflict between the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and the 12th SS Panzer Division, particularly the issue of murdering Prisoners of War by the Germans. By documenting several previously uncredited murders, Margolian has revealed the full extent of the SS atrocities. Each incident is treated with respect and by using forensic evidence he has made a plausible reconstruction of the events. A credit to scholarship.

Crime in Canada and the war, (Current Canadian problems)

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Crime in Canada and the war, (Current Canadian problems)
H. G Wyatt
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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A Moving and Thought-inspiring Read...

Crimes of War
Peter Hogg
Manufacturer: Thomas Dunne Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

Canadian Detectives | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Horror Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 0312269544

Book Description

“Reile is alive and he’d been there. He’d done all those things. The shootings, the gassings. I was sure of that. There had been no trial for him. He’d escaped the Soviets, he’d escaped the Germans, and we’d welcomed him in with open arms.”

So writes Dennis Connor, the hero of this story, a historian/researcher working for the Special Prosecutions Unit, “an organization dedicated to the swift investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals in Canada.” Yet the SPU in this story – and in Canadian reality – had no success in its task, not one successful prosecution to report. Why not?

Connor’s sardonic account of his busy, well-paid colleagues, building files that will go nowhere, is comic yet chilling. Yet despite the web of office intrigues and affairs, and the researches that take him to Moscow during the failed coup against Yeltsin, he is determined to catch the mass murderer Reile.

In alternating chapters we hear from Reile, now a respected senior citizen living quietly in Winnipeg. “Another envelope arrived this morning,” he notes, as Connor closes in. The pursuit revives Reile’s memories of those terrible times. We watch how, day by day, an ordinary young man in a new uniform turns into a war criminal, involved in scenes that make harrowing reading.

This is a deep, powerful novel that will keep readers turning the pages – and then engaged in hot debate.

Customer Reviews:

A Moving and Thought-inspiring Read..........2001-07-07

As a fan of Canadian literature and authors, I picked up Peter Hogg's "Crimes of War" with a bit of hesitation. Previous to this book, it had been my experience that the 'Nazis' of fiction tend to come off as one-dimensional, with nearly no thought behind them: cardboard villains.

This was not the case in "Crimes of War." Hogg has put a monumental amount of thought and effort into making this book not only enjoyable, but emotionally stirring. The main character, like Hogg himself once did, works in the special division of the Canadian Government that tracks down escaped world war II criminals in Canada.

Time, however, has made this government office obsolete. The Nazis are dying of old age, and, worse, so are the victims who could identify them even if they were arrested. The office is being closed, and Hogg's protagonist, Dennis Connor, has the distinctly unpleasant duty of being the last one there to shut it down, lock the door, and leave the keys behind.

But first, there is one more criminal he knows has escaped into Canada: Reile.

Alternating between the view of the war criminal, the protagonist, and dancing between the present and the past, this book is highly evocative. There is a real humanization of the Nazi who is old aged and ailing, and hiding in Canada. Hogg's novel dares to explore what the mass murderers of world war two were like on an individual level - and without pulling punches: Riele is not an apparent monster.

As the back of the book says, "Does it makes sense to pursue old men in their seventies or eighties for what they did, under orders, in the tumoil of war in Europe fifty years earlier?" "How can the forces of justive ignore mass murderers among us, regardless of how much time has elapsed since they killed their last child?"

Book Description

In her classic study of WWII, Dame Rebecca West interprets the impulse of treachery and betrayal. From the trials of William Joyce and John Amery, the renowned historian takes the reader from a London devastated by war into the inner world of "sufferings which overtake people who live unnaturally and cut the bonds which bind them to their own country."

Trial and error: Canada's Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals and the Soviets

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Trial and error: Canada's Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals and the Soviets
Nikolai Tolstoy
Manufacturer: Justinian Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Criminology | Crime & Criminals | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Unauthorized Entry: The Truth about Nazi War Criminals in Canada 1946-1956

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The Best Of The Lot

Unauthorized Entry: The Truth about Nazi War Criminals in Canada 1946-1956
Howard Margolian
Manufacturer: University of Toronto Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

20th Century | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Canada | Military | History | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

The Best Of The Lot.......2007-09-10

Several books have been written about the movement of Nazi war criminals to Canada following WW II, and in particular about the events leading up to, and surrounding, the 1985 Deschenes Commission of Inquiry.

Whereas some of the other references have specific axes to grind, charging that Canada - either deliberately or unwittingly - became a safe haven for some of the worst criminals to emerge from the war - Mr. Margolian deals with the subject in a straightforward, unambiguous manner. So much so that it leaves no doubt that the war criminal "movement" was in no way a conspiracy but simply a manifestation of the times.

There was mass confusion in Europe at the time, with millions of displaced people in camps with either very little or no identification papers. With unrelenting political pressure from every special interest group in creation back home in Canada, the officers abroad were constantly being "encouraged" to speed up processing. Consequently, some bad actors were able to slip through.

As a primary Immigration Department witness before the Deschenes Commission, and after reading all of the other accounts published since then, I can say unequivocally that this is the most comprehensive and fairest of them all.

Book Description

This volume describes practical techniques for conducting field experiments. The style is relaxed and enjoyable to read, with new chapters concerning difficult sites; how to arrange tests that can help solve farmers' immediate problems; and patterns of fertility and their study in statistical analysis by numerical and graphical methods. The emphasis is on understanding statistics without the use of detailed mathematical formulae; researchers with little statistical training and scientists planning trials will find this work invaluable.

COMPARATIVE EXPERIMENTS WITH FIELD CROPS,SECOND ED.

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COMPARATIVE EXPERIMENTS WITH FIELD CROPS,SECOND ED.
G.V. Dyke
Manufacturer: A Charles Griffin Book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKUMQ8

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