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Kevin and Debra Rollins Center for eBusiness - The Death of e and the Birth of the Real New Economy
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Kevin and Debra Rollins Center for eBusiness

The Death of e and the Birth of the Real New Economy

The Death of e and the Birth of the Real New Economy

Peter Fingar and Ronald Aronica

A book review by D. Richard Dance, CPA and Principal of TD LLC
and Michael Leary, Senior Manager, TD LLC
Copyright TD LLC

January 2002

In the forward to The Death of "e", Fingar and Aronica state "e" is dead because e-business is no longer an option, rather every business must be an e-business. Now that the "e" hype is over, the real work of business transformation has begun. The book challenges companies to be predictive, adaptive, and flexible in unconventional ways. It lays the foundation for the networked economy operating in the future.

Introduction:

In the forward to The Death of "e", Fingar and Aronica state "e" is dead because e-business is no longer an option, rather every business must be an e-business. Now that the "e" hype is over, the real work of business transformation has begun. The book challenges companies to be predictive, adaptive, and flexible in unconventional ways. It lays the foundation for the networked economy operating in the future.

Premise of the Book:

The book provides an analysis of the business models, technologies, and strategies going forward from where we are today.

Contents:

This book is organized as follows:

  • Part I: "What's Really New in the Real Economy" - 130 pages of the author's thoughts and recommendations
  • Part II: six chapters of thoughts from thought leaders other than the authors
  • "Peer-to-Peer Commerce" by Bob Anderson
  • "Collaborative Commerce" by Saxena, R&T Harmon
  • "Portals: Business on the Network Edge by Morris
    (This was my favorite of the six chapters and was originally in the eAI Journal. It has a bold, crisp, declarative writing style.)
  • "Adaptive Strategies for B2B Marketplaces" by Sinkgh
  • "B2B Integration: The Message is the Medium" by Blackburn
  • "Bringing Visibility to the Extended Supply Chain" by Steinman and Store
  • Background Appendices
  • Appendix A- "Prelude to the Digital Economy: The Dot-Com Crash of 2000"
  • Appendix B - "Pillars of Digital Commerce"
  • Appendix C -"Business Fundamentals of the 21st Century Economy"
  • Appendix D - "Understanding ebxML, UDDI, and XML/ed"
  • Appendix E - "Web Resources"
  • Bibliography - 25 pages of bibliographies, some of the most extensive you will ever see.

    10 Myths debunked:

    The first chapter of the book debunks 10 myths. These are:

    • There is a new economy
    • There is no "new" economy, but there is something very new in the real economy.
    • The Internet provides a powerful new business infrastructure, a universal information system for handling the transactions of the economy that brings radical new efficiencies to both buyers and sellers of goods and services.
    • The Internet is a business fad that faded in 2000.
    • The foremost goal of a company is to deliver shareholder value.
    • Clever ideas make new wealth.
    • B2B marketplace should be the focus of e-business efforts.
    • B2C e-commerce is dead.
    • The need for speed is central to competitive advantage in the Internet age.
    • The Internet disintermediates.
    • Build it and they will come.
    • E-commerce is dead.

    Internet Business Timeline:

    To analyze the Internet's impact on business, a quick reflection on major waves the authors enumerate is useful

    1st Wave = Brochureware. Product information on-line
    2nd Wave = E-Commerce. Business to consumer buying and selling
    3rd Wave = E-Procurement. Business to business coupling of buyers and sellers.
    4th Wave = Electronic Marketplaces. Multiple buyer and multiple seller e-marketplaces
    5th Wave = The Digital Economy. Multiple marketplaces using intelligent agents driving value chains.

    Key Concepts:

    Fingar and Aronica believe the new way of competing is in value-chain optimization. Two statements they make about companies that get it are particularly telling:

    Companies that "get it" are redesigning business processes so they cross enterprise boundaries to eradicate duplicate processes, ineffective hand-offs and disconnects between and among enterprises.

    Companies that "get it" also realize competing in the future is about turning a company and its entire value chain over to the command and control of the customer.

    In chapter 4, which is "The Art of Digital Business", the authors submit there are four areas a business needs to master, namely,

    • Building digital marketplaces
    • Rendering services electronically
    • Managing knowledge digitally
    • Building holistic customer-relationship management systems

    One of the statements that rang particularly true with me was the following excerpt from Donald Norman in his book, Things that Make Us Smart: "It's the information we surround ourselves with as we do a task that makes us smart." Mountains of data and disjointed tidbits of know-how are of little use unless they are distilled and made available to the people or software that displays it in a contextual framework.

    Commerce Resource Platform (CRP):

    To manage the complexity of inter-enterprise systems, the authors believe companies need something more than point-to-point solutions that take care of the white space between systems. They recommend in their extensive mind map on page 93 a Commerce Resource Platform, CRP as they call it that contains the following elements

    • Open Technology Platform
    • Commerce Lifecycle Management
    • Mediation-Negotiation Management
    • Community- Marketplace Management
    • Multiple Dynamic Workflows
    • External Resources such as XML, UDDI, SOAP, and CWMI

    This chapter is the heart of the book, and the last two inform the reader how to make use of CRP with component-based architectures and corresponding business strategy that involves people, process, and technology.

    So that's it - the message is presented and completed in about 130 pages and 7 chapters

    Was the book worth reading?
    Yes. Fingar and Aronica have clearly been around long enough to give meaningful I information in the book.

    Was it titled appropriately?
    No. The death of e was only in chapter 1. The real message of the book was about the Commerce Resource Platform CRP, which is a brainchild of an idea but probably wasn't judged by the publishers to be sellable.

    Was it compelling?
    It should have been, but, for some reason it wasn't. I would have enjoyed a shorter, better-proofread book with the vital arguments leading me to believe that CRP must be at our company.

    Where to Obtain the Book:

    It can be purchased directly from the following sources:

    Amazon.com's web site (www.amazon.com) for $35.96.
    Booksamillion's web site (www.bamm.com) for $33.37.
    Barnes and Noble's web site (www.bn.com) for $35.96.

    Information about TD LLC:

    TD LLC is a new company formed out of SoftResources LLC (see www.softresources.com) that focuses on helping software vendors and their value added resellers (VARs) become all that they can be for the benefit of the end user. It's main services are (1) sales, marketing, and strategic services, (2) product advisory services, (3) operational services, and (4) training and publishing services. The main office is in Seattle, WA, with auxiliary offices in Boston, MA and Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

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