| How Digital is Your Business? | 
 enlarge | Authors: Adrian J. Slywotzky, David J. Morrison
Publisher: Random House Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (18 reviews)
Sales Rank: 2561138
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Number Of Items: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0375416285
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.800285
EAN: 9780375416286
ASIN: 0375416285
Publication Date: November 7, 2000
Release Date: November 7, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Adrian Slywotzky and David Morrison are back with another brilliant and practical book dealing with the big issues that keep the managers of every company awake at night: How do I keep my company from being "Amazoned," and how do I "anticipate my competitors, launch a preemptive digital strike, and completely change the landscape of my industry?"
The insights in How Digital is Your Business? are penetrating and practical.The examples of digital businesses run the gamut: from the most basic of commodities (Cemex, the leader in the cement industry) to financial services (Schwab), to the highest of high tech (Cisco).The answer to the question "How digital is your business?" will vary with every company, but it must be answered.Slywotzky and Morrison provide the ideas, tools, and examples everyone in business needs.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 A good read February 16, 2006
The new economy has also been called the digital economy. One of the most important issues facing companies today is making the transition to the new economy and having a digital business. The authors describe "going digital" as a process where the company creates a great Digital Business Design (DBD) that allows the company to expand its strategic options, thereby crafting a unique and superior business model.
The reader, in learning how to make a company digital, will specifically learn:
Digital Business Design involves creating a value proposition that is unique to the company for both your employees and your customers. It also involves having a profit model that is designed to protect this new revenue.
Managing bits not atoms is the key to a successful Digital Business Design. Managing information, referred to as bits, instead of managing physical assets, referred to as atoms, allows the company to sell and service customers faster and cheaper.
Creating choiceboards allows a company to move away from guessing customers expectations and move toward customers telling the company exactly what is expected. This is all done faster than before.
Practicing 10X productivity allows for a higher level of work and greater productivity by the company leveraging its digital resources
Creating a digital organization allows everyone at every level access to information. This organization is fast, accurate, changeable, and shifts the focus externally.
Continue to develop talent base is done from the top down. This is the only way an organization can continue to compete in the digital age.
Digital business design - a new profit model? April 12, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The authors Slywotzky and Morrison are renowned for their inspiring bestseller "Profit Zones" in which they elaborate on 22 different profit models for businesses. In this book on digital business design they explain how to design the 23rd profit model.
Digital Business Design is the art of using digital technologies to expand a company's strategic options. It is not about technology for its own sake; it's about serving customers, creating unique value propositions, leveraging talent, radically improving productivity, and increasing profits. It's about using digital options to craft a business model that is not only superior, but also unique.
Until recently, the probability that any organization would enjoy long-term success was determined by a single factor: the quality of its business design. Today, the multiplication of digital technologies has introduced a second crucial competitive factor: the degree of its relevant digitization.
FOUR-QUADRANT "MAP"
Any organization can be mapped into a four-quadrant "map" based on its level of digitization and its business design:
* Low digitization, bad business design (Southwest quadrant - "Weak Business Designs").
* High digitization, bad business design (Northwest quadrant - "The Dotcoms").
* Low digitization, great business design (Southeast quadrant - "Business Design Reinventors").
* High digitization, great business design (Northeast quadrant - "Digital Business Design").
YOUR DIGITAL RATIO
One important aspect of moving from a conventional to a Digital Business Design involves shifting many of your company's key activities from paper-based processes to digital (usually on-line) processes. To obtain at least a partial measure of how digital your business is, complete a simple exercise referred to as estimating your Digital Ratio. The authors suggest that you measure the following processes [0-100% digital]: selling, delivery, supply chain, customer service, billing, buying, recruiting, training, finance, R&D, manufacturing, and marketing.
Moving towards 100% digital is not an end in itself. Any decision to move a particular activity toward the right, and how far, depends on your key business issues, what is required to improve your value proposition for your customers and employees, and the capital and process efficiencies of your business.
On the surface, Digital Business Design indicates how many of your business processes are conducted on-line. At a deeper level, it tells whether you've transformed the way you do business by taking advantage of the new strategic options enabled by digital technologies.
THE DIGITAL BUSINESS DESIGN BENEFITS SCALE
Figuring your Digital Ratio is a useful exercise; for many companies, it will be a sobering one. But it only scratches the surface of what Digital Business Design really means. The experience of the digital innovators shows that Digital Business Design can fundamentally change the way you do business. It enables you to make a dramatic, positive shift toward implementing the benefits:
1. FROM GUESSING TO KNOWING. The basis of your business decision-making shifts from guessing to knowing.
2. FROM MISMATCH TO A PERFECT FIT. The value proposition you offer to your customers shifts from a mismatch (great or small) to a perfect fit.
3. FROM LAG TIME TO REAL TIME. Information flow within your company shifts from lag time to real time.
4. FROM SUPPLIER SERVICE TO CUSTOMER SELF-SERVICE. Your customer service model shifts from supplier service to customer self-service.
5. FROM LOW VALUE-ADDED WORK TO MAXIMUM TALENT LEVERAGE. The use of your employees' time shifts from predominantly low value-added work to maximum talent leverage.
6. FROM FIXING ERRORS TO PREVENTING ERRORS. Your processes shift from a focus on fixing errors to preventing them.
7. FROM 10% IMPROVEMENT TO 10X PRODUCTIVITY. Your productivity growth pattern shifts from a norm of 10 percent improvement to 10 times productivity.
8. FROM SEPARATE SILOS TO INTEGRATED SYSTEM. Your organization shifts from a collection of separate silos to an integrated system in which information, ideas, and solutions are shared.
The authors make a strong point of emphasizing that being digital is not only about the Internet (e-mail, e-commerce, e-services, etc.), but also all the other great things we do to MOVE FROM ATOMS TO BITS, e.g. empowering people and organizations via PCs, networks, ERP systems, etc.
Beware that Slywotzky in his marvellous business novel "Art of Profitability" (2002) becomes more reluctant to the concept of a "digital business design" as a 23rd profit model. So the verdict is still out on the digital profit model...
Nevertheless, most businesses must continually evaluate which of their business processes that profitably should be transformed from paper-based to digital. But this may just be part of an organization's operational excellence, not necessarily a new profit model ...
In 2005, the cases in the book (Cisco, Schwab, Dell, IBM, GE, etc.) are too well-known to stimulate current readers. That is why I only rate the book three stars.
Being a business development manager, I search for relevant tools to apply the new ideas to my own business. At the website for this book - HowDigitalIsYourBusiness.com -, you'll find excellent "Tours" to two case studies and two presentations on Bit Engine and Choiceboards.
Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business
 Surviving business will occupy unique & evolving positions January 31, 2005
1.The basis of your business decision-making shift from guessing to knowing.
2.The value proposition you offer to your customers shifts from a mismatch to a perfect fit
3.Information flow with your company shift from lag time to real time.
4.Your customer service model shifts from supplier service to customer self-service
5.The use of your employees' time shifts from predominantly low value-added to maximum talent leverage
6.Your processes shift from a focus on fixing errors to preventing them
7.Your productivity growth pattern shifts from a norm of 10 percent improvement to 10X productivity improvement
8.Your organization shifts from collection of separate silos to integrated system in which information, ideas, and solutions are shared.
Authors Adrian Slywotzky and David Morrison illustrate these DBD principles in case studies of Dell, Cemex, Charles Schwab, Cisco, GE, and IBM. "It's important to have hands-on, high-touch service available when needed. But, by digitizing services that don't require in-person assistance, the overall cost structure is improved, customers receive better service, and profitability is greater." "True productivity is measured by the needs and desires of customers rather than a company's business objectives." "10X productivity is important not just because it can and will help toward meeting the next quarter's earnings forecast, but because it releases money and frees it for investment in growth." "In mapping out your digitization strategy, start by asking: Which of the three areas-capital, cost, or cycle time- is most crucial to the economics of my business and my customer's businesses?"
In the mid 1990s Charles Schwab dominated the discount brokerage business. Schwab enjoyed stellar growth and was one of the most sure-fired innovators in the financial sector. In 1992, Schwab launched OneSource. In the same year, E-Trade offered a flat $14.95 commission on stock trades. Schwab's average commission was around $60 and profits were excellent. Customers wanted control over their information, processes, and services to make investments. Should Schwab go online and be exposed to a 75 percent reducing in commissions. Schwab had to decide between two paths: risking the whole company by moving to an online service online or keeping the traditional brokerage model. Schwab was willing to innovate, reinvent their products and services, and respond to it customers. Dan Leeman, Head of Strategy explained, "We created eSchwab because we wanted to learn. But we did not want to risk the whole company." eSchwab commission was $29.95 more than double E-trade. Schwab position was not price differentiation; rather, it was a response to customer's demands for speed, convenience, and ubiquity of on-line investing-value added investing. The online services were separate from the rich services provided by the traditional brick and mortar high-touch services. Customers were telling Schwab that reintegrating eSchwab into the traditional brokerage division was the right way to go. The result would be commission compression. Schwab bit the bullet and announce reintegration and a commission structure of $29.95 up to 1,000 shares, online or off. 1998, at the Golden Gate Bridge, David Pottruck handed out jackets with the slogan "Crossing the Chasm" embroidered on the back and then led them on a walk across San Francisco Bay. The dropping commission income caused Schwabs stock market capitalization to plummet, falling $2 billion. Volume began picking up and Investors recognized the volume increase and reward Schwab by investing again in the company. Schwab's market value grew to $23 billion more than double the summer low. One investor said, "I like the fact that Schwab has bricks-and-mortar building. I think it's the skepticism I have about the start-up. I'm nervous because all their money is electronic... It's worth the price to have the brand name and reliability of Good Ol' Schwab." "Where a digital presence offers speed and convenience, the physical presence offers a basis for building trust. In many businesses, customers insist on both."
DBD will cause company cultures to change and cause digital to spread to every division, department, and business process. How fast is your business? Can you make quick decisions? How rapidly can you act when a decision is made? Being fast is a matter of mindset. But being fast but wrong gains you nothing; DBD goal is marketing and customer service that is dead-on accurate rather than more-or-less in the ballpark. Rapid change has a simple logic, when the world changes rapidly, you must change more rapidly. Change is a function of flexibility and flexibility is the product of good design. The Digital model allows for morphable changes in a short period of time. Factories must be reconfigured, rebuilt, or sold. All these steps take time, cost money, and distract attention from moves that can benefit customers directly. Therefore it is crucial not be saddle with resources that are not central to the business model: case in point, B&N (real-estate building verse Amazon online warehousing), the emerging eBook and rapid electronic publishing and high speed low cost printing.
"Business with the insight and courage to redesign themselves as needed to achieve and sustain place in the minds of customers as well as growing share of sales and profits...businesses that know how to take advantage of both traditional and digital options to create and occupy unique and continually evolving position in a rapidly changing economic universe."
 Written for 9th graders January 15, 2003
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
First five chapters are on Dell's configurator "Choice board". This one is a total waste of time. Not technical, not re-invent the business. What is the audience here?
Forcing the issue November 11, 2001
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I thought the first three books by Slywotsky and co. were really good. But this one is really awful. The content -- digital business design -- can be summarized in one page. They just try to keep stretching the material to complete a book -- for the sole purpose of selling. The same point keeps being repeated again, again, and gain. Check the bibliography and read the sources. They are much better! Read the Profit Zone, Value Migration and Profit Patterns. They are much more relevant today though many principles are extremely difficult to apply in today's very unpredictable environment.
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