Web Business Engineering: Using Offline Activities to Drive Internet Strategies (Addison-Wesley Information Technology Series) - Softcover

Flor, Nick V.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 020160468X ISBN 13: 9780201604689

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 2000

Synopsis

Flor (Carnegie Mellon) approaches the web as a technology that serves business needs, rather than a technology in search of a business need. His method is to first identify those needs, and then create a profitable web site that adds value to a business. The book also explains how to calculate return on investment, net present value, internal rate of return, and the amount of payback from web sites. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

About this title

About the Author

Nick V. Flor is a Professor of Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon's Graduate School of Industrial Administration. On the vanguard of business/technology interaction, he was the first professor at a top-ranked graduate school to teach business uses of the Web. He is also a researcher, consultant to high-tech industries, and international lecturer on the topic. This book represents the culmination of over four years of research, teaching, and consulting. He has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science, an MS in Human-Computer Interaction, and a BS in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego. He owns two highly profitable Web businesses--datingexpert and yesnomaybe--designed using the techniques in this book.

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From the Back Cover

As a Web development professional, you have significant knowledge of Internet and Web technologies, but what do you know about business strategy? You can produce a Web site that incorporates eye-catching graphics and sophisticated features, but does it truly serve the organization's needs?

Web Business Engineering is your bridge from technical understanding to business savvy. Web practitioners and entrepreneurs will learn to approach the Web as a technology that serves business needs, not a technology in search of a business need. This book shows you, step-by-step, how to identify those needs and then create a profitable Web site that truly adds value to the business.

The author presents a new methodology--web business engineering--that combines business concepts with engineering-strength design and analysis techniques. He demonstrates how to use this methodology to analyze an organization's offline needs, determine where the Web opportunities lie, and create an effective online solution.

You will find coverage of such topics as:

• Business 101--idea-to-product--marketing, sales, and support
• How information supports the value chain for physical and knowledge-based products
• Competitive advantages of the Web
• Calculating Return on Investment (ROI), Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and the amount of payback for Web sites
• Mapping business activities
• Building a model of interaction costs
• Diagnosing business problems and opportunities
• Designing Web-based solutions
• Ten free ways to create Web site traffic
• How to generate revenue with information-based Web businesses
• Memetic marketing for driving traffic to your Web site

A large portion of the book is devoted to real-world case studies that demonstrate how Web business engineering benefits a wide variety of businesses in diverse industries--from a small hair salon to a large institution conducting a survey. Further case studies illustrate how to use Web business engineering to enhance existing Web sites for greater impact and profitability.

Both forward-looking and practical, Web Business Engineering will help the business and technology communities identify and implement the real value-added opportunities of the Web.

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From the Inside Flap

The idea is not to get as complicated as you can, but to get as much of yourself into it as you can. Music has to go places.
--Jimi Hendrix

In the fall of 1994, I was hired as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University's Business School--the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA). Because the Web was still in its infancy at that time, there were no courses at GSIA, or at any other top business school, that taught systematic methods for effectively using the Web in businesses. So I decided that I would teach such a course. I ran this idea past some of my more senior colleagues, who were less than enthusiastic. A common remark was "The Web is just a fad. It's not going anywhere. We've had the Internet for years." However, having worked as an engineer on the Web's predecessor (Time Warner's Interactive-TV project)--not to mention doing a multiuser Internet adventure game (MUD) as part of my thesis research--I knew the Web was an important technology with potentially far-reaching implications for both consumers and businesses. I therefore set out to create such a course. A year later, I received a grant from the government (DARPA) through Stanford University's Enterprise Integration Technologies program for my Virtual Market Square project. The goal of this project was to train businesses on how to properly use the Web and other Internet technologies. This book is the culmination of four years of research and teaching on the general topic of how to use online technologies effectively in businesses.

I think you will find this book very different from other technical Web or business books you may have read. It is neither a purely technical book that details the latest online technology (such as Dynamic HTML), nor is it purely a business book that examines several cases of successful Web companies (such as Amazon) to present a set of best management practices. The Web as we currently know it is a collection of technologies in flux. As the technologies underlying the Web change, the nature of competition also shifts, so today's successful Web companies may not be successful tomorrow. One need only look at Netscape for an example of how quickly a successful Web company can fall.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing against studying Web technological details or case studies of successful Web companies. Both can provide insights into what a company should be doing on the Web. What I do argue, however, is that a company's most effective strategy for using the Web is typically not found by copying what successful "online" companies are doing but rather by careful analysis of what successful companies are doing offline. The emphasis is not on what successful online companies are doing now but rather on what companies ought to be doing online based on their "offline" activities.

The Web strategy I advocate in this book can be summed up with the following statement: Use offline activities to drive online activities. In short, the activities that a company is doing offline should determine what activities that company does online. If you are a Web entrepreneur thinking of starting your own Web company, the strategy still holds, except you use the offline activities of successful existing companies to drive what you do online. In this manner, business constrains technology, not vice versa. The key is to have some kind of method for effectively analyzing offline activities. This book provides you a systematic method for doing such an analysis.

In closing, I believe the real business uses of the Web have yet to be discovered. This book can help you map out those uses.

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PREFACE The idea is not to get as complicated as you can, but to get as much of yourself into it as you can. Music has to go places. --Jimi Hendrix In the fall of 1994, I was hired as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University's Business School--the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA). Because the Web was still in its infancy at that time, there were no courses at GSIA, or at any other top business school, that taught systematic methods for effectively using the Web in businesses. So I decided that I would teach such a course. I ran this idea past some of my more senior colleagues, who were less than enthusiastic. A common remark was "The Web is just a fad. It's not going anywhere. We've had the Internet for years." However, having worked as an engineer on the Web's predecessor (Time Warner's Interactive-TV project)--not to mention doing a multiuser Internet adventure game (MUD) as part of my thesis research--I knew the Web was an important technology with potentially far-reaching implications for both consumers and businesses. I therefore set out to create such a course. A year later, I received a grant from the government (DARPA) through Stanford University's Enterprise Integration Technologies program for my Virtual Market Square project. The goal of this project was to train businesses on how to properly use the Web and other Internet technologies. This book is the culmination of four years of research and teaching on the general topic of how to use online technologies effectively in businesses. I think you will find this book very different from other technical Web or business books you may have read. It is neither a purely technical book that details the latest online technology (such as Dynamic HTML), nor is it purely a business book that examines several cases of successful Web companies (such as Amazon.com) to present a set of best management practices. The Web as we currently know it is a collection of technologies in flux. As the technologies underlying the Web change, the nature of competition also shifts, so today's successful Web companies may not be successful tomorrow. One need only look at Netscape for an example of how quickly a successful Web company can fall. Don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing against studying Web technological details or case studies of successful Web companies. Both can provide insights into what a company should be doing on the Web. What I do argue, however, is that a company's most effective strategy for using the Web is typically not found by copying what successful "online" companies are doing but rather by careful analysis of what successful companies are doing offline. The emphasis is not on what successful online companies are doing now but rather on what companies ought to be doing online based on their "offline" activities. The Web strategy I advocate in this book can be summed up with the following statement: Use offline activities to drive online activities. In short, the activities that a company is doing offline should determine what activities that company does online. If you are a Web entrepreneur thinking of starting your own Web company, the strategy still holds, except you use the offline activities of successful existing companies to drive what you do online. In this manner, business constrains technology, not vice versa. The key is to have some kind of method for effectively analyzing offline activities. This book provides you a systematic method for doing such an analysis. In closing, I believe the real business uses of the Web have yet to be discovered. This book can help you map out those uses.

Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 020160468X
• ISBN 13: 9780201604689
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256