Software Rules: How the Next Generation of Enterprise Applications Will Increase Strategic Effectiveness - Hardcover

Barrenechea, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071385169 ISBN 13: 9780071385169

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 2002

Synopsis

A top industry executive explains total software integration and how it holds the key to market leadership

To achieve fast, agile, and diverse responsiveness to today's ever shifting business needs, executives need to successfully implement strategic decisions based more on reality rather than rhetoric.

In Software Rules, Oracle senior executive Mark Barrenechea describes for business readers how, over the next few years, the total integration of software functions into "E-business suites," will radically transform the business landscape. An E-business suite is a set of applications, founded on a centralized database and integrated by desing, that optimizes the supply and demand chains together, enabling employees anywhere on the globe to access accurate and reliable business data that always reflects real information. Using case studies from BellSouth, Xerox, EMC, HP, Oracle, and other leading companies, he describes how E-business suites work to help companies in all industry sectors to centralize change, dramatically improve customer service, slash production costs, streamline product introduction and upgrades, gather definitive business intelligence, transform marketing into electronic selling, and much more.

About this title

From the Back Cover

An Easy-to-Implement Roadmap for Integrating Your Company's Internal and External E-Business Capabilities

In today's unbridled rush to achieve competitive advantage, the research, development, and marketing of user-friendly and integrative software has taken on a new urgency. Software Rules provides an insider's perspective on which software solutions will provide the necessary integration in this fast-moving environment, and reveals a systematic, step-by-step process for implementing those solutions in your own organization.

Written by computer solutions thought leader and software industry veteran Mark Barrenechea, but applicable to virtually any company or competitive environment, this timely and essential book discusses:

• The value of E-Business Suites in integrating an organization's functions­­both internally and globally
• Techniques for operating all internal computer systems from a single IT installation
• Strategies for instantly understanding and capturing the business benefits of new technologies

Market dominance tomorrow requires a proactive technological mindset today. Let Software Rules provide you with that mindset, and prepare you for the fast-approaching world in which integrated software functionality will be a competitive requirement­­inside and outside your corporate walls.

"If you believe that doing things the way you always have but expecting different results is, indeed, one definition of insanity, you will welcome this book. If you agree that it's time for a new approach to your technology­­and for more coherent solutions­­this book is worth your time. It will cause you to think differently, ask different questions, and maybe change your company for the better."­­Marc Singer, Principal, McKinsey & Company

Information technologies are the Rubik's Cube of the 21st century. Executives first try this combination of software solutions, then that combination, and still find it difficult if not impossible to assemble a basket of solutions that makes everything work.

Software Rules proposes that the basket approach itself may be the problem. This intuitive and innovative book proposes the e-business suite­­a complete business software platform that, because it has been engineered by one vendor around a unified global customer and product database, requires no custom programming or architectural reconstruction for full integration.

Explaining today's most sophisticated technologies in accessible, non-technical language, Software Rules provides a roadmap for transforming your organization's computer systems. In-depth analyses combine with case studies of e-business leaders from Oracle and Xerox to BellSouth and Humana to help you and your company:

• Combine data and business software into a single, customer-centric, and globally accessible database network
• Streamline product introductions and upgrades, covering all lines of business, partners, and supply chains
• Simplify data access through easy-to-use applications that require little or no user training

The Internet has changed the landscape of global business, allowing companies to interact with actual and prospective customers and vendors like never before. But before companies can take full advantage of these external benefits, and align their computer systems with those of other companies for mutual transparency, they must first simplify and standardize their internal systems to become transparent within their own ranks. Software Rules unveils a framework for clarification and integration of software functions, one that is guaranteed to provide increased productivity, a foundation for seamless globalization, and a more barrier-free route to market domination.

About the Author

Mark Barrenechea is the senior vice president for applications development at Oracle Corporation. The author of e-Business or Out of Business, he is a frequent and popular speaker at computer industry events.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0071385169
• ISBN 13: 9780071385169
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256