Introduction

Summary

In an era of e-Everything, there is no shortage of books proselytizing the benefits of participating in the e-Universe and warning that the failure to develop and execute a Net commerce strategy threatens your company's survival. There's no shortage of vendors and consultants offering to sell you Net commerce solutions and presenting themselves as experts with broad strategic scope and knowledge of “how to do it right.” While most of these purveyors talk a good game at the information and strategy level, they lack a rigorous approach in putting it all together.

The reason there are so many claims is because the underlying value proposition and the opportunities are enormous. Enterprises that develop a business strategy that perfectly integrates traditional real world operations with a great Net business model, and that are able to simulate its implementation and test its assumptions before investing millions, will have a major competitive advantage. A rigorous, continuously fine-tuned approach to execution will also be on the critical path.

It's not an easy thing to do. Furthermore, it has to be done fast the first time, the second time, the third, and the nth time. Your markets—everybody's markets—are changing that quickly. But major winners will determine how to innovate, sustain, remain, and then re-innovate.

Faisal Hoque has developed a robust methodology that enables an enterprise to develop its electronic commerce vision and strategy; to architect and simulate the business processes and technology applications that operationalize the strategy; and to create the repository so that every architectural component can be reused in the next iteration (and the next, and the next).