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

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. Today s and tomorrow s e xecutives need to know how they can achieve similar results. Written by PricewaterhouseCoopers professionals, Executive s 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 company s 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.