From the book lists at Adware Report:

All information current as of 21:26:51 Pacific Time, Wednesday, 16 March 2005. e-Business Intelligence: Turning Information into Knowledge into Profit    by Bernard Liautaud   Hardcover:     McGraw-Hill     12 October, 2000    US$18.45         Usually ships in 24 hours Click the button below to . . .      (which will add the book to your Amazon U.S.A. "Shopping Cart") . . . or use your browser's Back button to return to the search-list page.

---

Editorial description(s):

Amazon.com
It is widely acknowledged that businesses today must harness the Net to effectively utilize the myriad details they glean from--and then pass around to--their various stakeholders. But how best to do that? e-Business Intelligence, by the head of a global company that helps others develop such efforts, lays out a variety of interrelated methodologies already in use by pioneering corporations around the world. In doing so, author Bernard Liautaud explains how to move from data (the extensive raw stats to which most contemporary firms are privy) to information (the proper context in which they must be applied) to intelligence (the collective knowledge from which appropriate actions are initiated). Liautaud shows how companies like Eli Lilly, MasterCard, and British Airways have created electronic relationships among employees, suppliers, consumers, and business partners to boost marketing, customer service, quality control, purchasing, and other activities. He explains how internal "information democracies" allow them to instantaneously distribute pertinent details throughout their organizations, while external "information embassies" facilitate the rapid transfer of pertinent facts to outside constituencies. To help readers develop their own individualized strategies, he presents specifics on gathering "customer intelligence," sharing product information, optimizing supply chains, and performing other critical tasks. --Howard Rothman

Bob Sanguedolce, CIO, eBay, Inc.
"A great roadmap for building your e-business intelligence strategies."

Rick Sherlund, Managing Diretor of Goldman Sachs
"This book demonstrates the power of harnessing and making use of information."

Judith S. Hurwitz, President & CEO, Hurwitz Group, Inc.
"Turning information into actionable knowledge is the key to electronic business success."

Andrew Clyne, Vice President, Systems Development, MasterCard International
"Textbook reading for any manager attempting to bridge the worlds of technology and business."

Book Info
Shows how to get a company up to speed with the new Internet economy, with case studies of major organizations like eBay and British Airways, explaining how a handful of technologies can transform a simple database into a corporate information treasure trove. DLC: Business intelligence.

From the Inside Flap
"The Internet not only enables e-business intelligence-it demands it, and demands it now. In the rapidly maturing realm of e-business intelligence, speed wins."

-Bernard Liautaud

In the new digital economy, rapid, unrelenting change is the only constant. To compete amid such a whirlwind of change, companies must be able to anticipate and adapt to ever-evolving market conditions, at warp-speed. More than anything, the key to achieving warp-speed strategic performance is maintaining a steady flow of fully- integrated, actionable information about all key business areas, including production, customer service, supply, marketing, sales, and HR.

But, as internationally acclaimed e-business intelligence guru Bernard Liautaud shows in this important new book, when it comes to corporate intelligence, most companies are still plodding along at the speed of the steam-driven locomotive. Anyone who doubts that assertion need only consider the recent findings by researchers at IBM that most business actively use only 7% of their data in making strategic business decisions.

In E-Business Intelligence, Bernard Liautaud shows you how to get your company up to speed for the Internet economy. With the help of fascinating and instructive case studies from Lucent, Dow Chemical, Disney, T. Rowe Price, Telecom Italia, Penske, Peugeot, Go Network and other major players at the forefront of the e-business revolution, he explains how, using a handful of key Web technologies, you can transform the vast reservoir of raw, untapped data languishing in your company databases into a corporate intelligence gold mine.

You'll learn how to excavate and integrate information spread throughout your company into a total corporate intelligence network embodying all organizational levels. And you'll learn how to strategically deploy e-business intelligence to significantly reduce costs, substantially improve operational efficiencies, achieve bold new levels of customer loyalty, forge solid, mutually beneficial alliances with suppliers and distributers, radically expand the scope and effectiveness of your marketing initiatives, and much more.

Writing from a strictly business, non-technical, perspective, Liautaud explains the what, why, and how of e-business intelligence in the new information economy. Then, focusing on the three main areas of e-business intelligence-intranets, extranets, and business-to-business e-commerce-he describes cutting edge strategies for accessing, analyzing, and sharing corporate data internally throughout an organization, as well as externally with customers, partners, and suppliers.

What it will take to prepare your company to compete and win in the rapidly emerging world, e-business economy? Read E-Business Intelligence and find out from the mind behind the intelligence strategies at many of today's leading e-business giants.

Bernard Liautaud is president, and CEO of Business Objects, the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence solutions. Liautaud founded Business Objects in 1990, and in 1996 he was named one of the "Hottest Entrepreneurs of the Year" by Business Week. In just under 10 years he has built Business Objects to a global corporation with nearly 10,000 customers and more than $200M in revenue. Business Objects was the first European software company to go public on Nasdaq (ticker symbol BOBJ). It is also included, along with Microsoft, Oracle, Siebel, and SAP, in Intelligent Enterprise's January 2000 "12 Most Influential Companies in the Information Technology Industry."

In addition to Mr. Liautaud's leadership position at Business Objects, he is a competitor in extreme sports, and is on the advisory board of the Nobel Prize-winning international medical relief organization Doctors Without Borders.

From the Back Cover
"A great roadmap for building your e-business intelligence strategies." - Bob Sanguedolce, CIO, eBay, Inc.

"Textbook reading for any manager attempting to bridge the worlds of technology and business." - Andrew clyne, Vice President, Systems Development, MasterCard International.

"This book demonstrates the power of harnessing and making use of information." - Rick Sherlund, Managing Director of Goldman Sachs.

"Turning information into actionable knowledge is the key to electronic business success." - Judith S. Hurwitz, President & CEO Hurwitz Group, Inc.

WHAT DRIVES THE INTELLIGENCE STRATEGIES OF TODAY's e-BUSINESS GIANTS?

Bernard Liautaud, President and CEO of Business Objects, the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence, provides a new model for maximizing the value of information.

Focusing on the three main areas of e-business intelligence - intranets, extranets, and business-to-business ecommerce - Liautaud describes cutting edge strategies for accessing, analyzing, and sharing corporate data. A vital link for companies seeking to compete in the New Information Economy, e-Business Intelligence is every manager's answer to the what, why, and how of e-business today.

About the Author
Bernard Liautaud (Palo Alto, CA) is CEO of Business Objects, the world's leading provider of e-business solutions, and, according to Intelligent Enterprise magazine, one of the "12 Most Influential Companies in the Information Technology Industry." In 1996, five years after founding Business Objects, Liautaud was named one of BusinessWeek's "Hottest Entrepreneurs of the Year."

Book Description
Internationally celebrated ebusiness innovator, Bernard Liautaud, explains why the key to ebusiness success is knowing how to transform the vast reservoir of raw data found in every company into a corporate intelligence gold mine.

This book focuses on the three main areas of ebusiness intelligence—intranets, extranets, and business-to-business ecommerce. He describes cutting-edge strategies for accessing, analyzing, and sharing corporate data both internally and externally with customers, partners, and suppliers. With the help of case studies from Lucent, Dow Chemical, Disney, Go Network, and other ebusiness giants, Liautaud explains the what, why, and how of ebusiness intelligence in the new information economy.

Bernard Liautaud (Palo Alto, CA) is CEO of Business Objects, the world's leading provider of ebusiness solutions, and, according to Intelligent Enterprise magazine, one of the "12 Most Influential Companies in the Information Technology Industry." In 1996, five years after founding Business Objects, Liataud was named one of BusinessWeek's "Hottest Entrepreneurs of the Year."




Reader review(s):

terrific read for business information strategy, November 21, 2000
This is a great book for anyone thinking about business strategy in the "information age", and trying to figure out how to best leverage the mountains of data in every company. I particularly liked how international this book is -- it features examples from more than just a few of companies in the US, but includes organizations across Europe as well (Fiat and British Airways along with US brands MasterCard and eBay). I was a big fan of customers.com, and this book is right up there on my list.

Comprehensive overview of important area -- a good read, November 29, 2000
I've read E-Business Intelligence twice and think it's a thorough overview of the subject of extracting intelligence from data. The book shows the different ways companies are actually exploiting information to help give their business a competitive advantage -- as opposed to simply automating the running of their operations.

Most information books today take a "stovepiped" view of the organization and talk only about one part of a company -- doing supply chain, customer relationship management, sales force automation, etc. What I like about this book is that it's holistic. It shows how us of these pieces fit together. It's a rare sideways (or transverse) way of looking at information exploitation.

The case studies are not highly detailed, but they do provide enough detail to illustrate "the point" behind each example, and they do stimulate the reader into thinking of new ways that he/she can exploit the information that they most likely already have in their information systems.

I think it's a must-read for business executives who are trying to get a handle on what's possible with today's technology and for information technology staff trying to get the business perspective on IT.

No business intelligence, just business promotion, November 26, 2002
While doing periodical research on the business intelligence subject, I found this book as a new acquisition at the university library; sorry, but it is a long white paper on the advantages and why to use a software tool for doing business intelligence, never minding about any data/facts that may be found out of the bits and bytes world: Informal sources? External data? Competitor intelligence? Who cares, if you want a 360� view of your customer, don't need more than a computer and some software--at the end, culture, attitude and pure business sense seem like a waste of time. Suddenly, I discovered why this bothered me: The autor is one of Business Objects' top executives! Now, it all made sense: It is like other books written by people who need to sell a product (and Business Objects is a good seller indeed) so writting down their way of seeing the world gets them a guruesque position in front of their customers and prospects. If you need to really learn about business intelligence, don't bother reading it: you can find lots of free white papers that cover the same subject in the BI software vendors web sites. Trying to understand business intellingence as something that needs nothing more than a software tool, leaving behind all the intelectual and analytical work to do, is equivalent to define mathematics as the use of a scientific calculator.

Hundred of pages of bromides, February 8, 2001
I cannot believe I was reading the same book as the other reviewers.

The book reads like a several hundred page marketing brochure chock full of commonplace, superficial thinking. Nowhere is there criticism of technology. Nowhere is there any thinking about the limits of this technology. Nowhere is there any insight on how to manage human beings so they use this technology intelligently.

In fact, in a perverse kind of way, the book describes technology in a way that you think the techology is more suitable to more stuctured, settled world of non-e business rather than the up for grabs environment of the e-business world.

A Must Read on E-Business Intelligence, November 28, 2000
If you are seeking a quick, concise, yet thorough analysis of how to make an impact with your e-business data, this is the book for you. The book is easy to follow, well-written, and most importantly, provides great examples.

There are volumes of data flowing into every enterprise at a record pace. Data analysis tools and strategies are expanding to meet the increasing needs for corporations to turn data into dollars.

Liautaud's book will help you to better understand the key elements of any successful e-business intelligence strategy. The examples represent a broad range of industries and really helped apply real-world thinking to the content.

It is nice to see a publication on this topic that is more than theory and predictions. This one is a winner.

If you are in this space, read this book.

Making Sense of E-Intelligence, March 3, 2001
The title sounded very daunting - E-Business Intelligence. What on earth had I got myself into! A daily user of computers, comfortable with a mouse, starting to use the web... I thought I would take the leap. What a pleasant surprise!!

The book explains in normal terminolgy how we can all use the wealth of information locked away in our databases. There are many aspects that I enjoyed about the book, not the least of which it was so easy to read. What made it this way was how the authors constantly gave clear examples of the key points they were making. They used real customers with real problems with real solutions.

For example they talk about "Mastercard mastering its data volumes". A company that has grown its data volumes by a massive 400% since 1995 and has thousands of users online everyday.

The authors also take the reader back to basics. They provide simple and clear explanations of processes and concepts that for many could be incomprehesible. They include graphs, hypotethical examples and anecdotal stories where ever possible. Those savvy with the ins and outs of the Business Intelligence world will even find this useful, so well is it done. They will also get quite a kick out of reading how some organisations are using BI to better manage data, clients and consequently profit. For example Eli Lilly, Hertz and eBay.

The clear explanation will enable any reader of the book to quickly understand, see the value and start thinking about what they could or should be doing in their own information world.

I have been inspired to look at what can be done within the organsiation I work for. Just how much better could I manage and work with my clients if I was able to access and use the information locked away on all of them?

A brilliant read for anyone who has clients,information, a computer and a desire to make a profit!

A must read for any executive., March 29, 2001
As an OLAP suport analyst myself I read this book to get a bigger picture of the BI area. I was impressed with the overall presentation of the subject. This book has inspired several ideas of my own that should allow me to unlock hidden revenue opportunities for my company and my clients. This is a must read for any DB support personnel all they way up to CEO/CIO. BI is projected to be one of the hot growth areas in the next decade and I can see why. Allowing companies to become information democracies permits all level employees to have the power to make decisions based on fact -- not gut feeling. BI will be an essential tool in guiding an organization's strategy in the coming years. Now, if I could just get my managers to read it....

Clear Perspectives on How to Turn Data into Advantages, March 2, 2001
This book is rare in my experience. It is helpful to both the executive who wants to develop important customer and competitive advantages and to the CIO who has to plan the company's electronic capabilities. The book succeeds in doing this in a way that will improve the dialogue and effectiveness of technical and nontechnical executives in working together to improve their organization's knowledge and ability to make good use of it. Beyond that, the book is well-founded in a vision of individuals (at work and at home) being able to interrogate data bases to find better ways to do things, and then cooperating with other people to save time and money.

Business intelligence software basically does two things: First, it pulls off data from other databases so that relevant information is all together in a usable form. Two, it contains simple query tools that allow anyone to ask a wide variety of ad hoc questions and get quick answers back. Think of this as being like turning a large business into the simplicity of a one-person operation being run by the owner.

The strength of the book comes in the many detailed examples from around the world of companies in different industries using business intelligence software to improve themselves, their customers, and suppliers. The examples come from companies of many different sizes, dealing with different kinds of problems, and having varying degrees of technical sophistication. These are presented in some detail in sidebars that are highlighted in gray backgrounds so that they are easy to find.

I intend to recommend this book to all of my clients, which is something I seldom do.

The writing in this book deserves special praise. Mr. Liautaud and Hammond have done a very careful and thorough job of taking complex ideas and breaking them down into simple words, concepts, lists, and examples. They have done this without "talking down" to the reader, and the material is consistently interesting. Mr. Hammond deserves special credit for understanding the advanced thinking of Mr. Liautaud that has led to the development of an entire industry around helping companies expand their e-business intelligence.

I am often annoyed by books written by CEOs of companies that have services to sell. The books often come across as one big piece of advertising or brochureware. Although the examples here come from Business Objects clients, I did not have that negative reaction to this book at all.

After you finish this book, you will realize that the key thing to getting benefit from e-business intelligence is to ask better questions once you have the databases and query tools in place to do your own interrogations. I suggest that you start asking those questions now. You may find that some can be answered simply and quickly without bogging down the IT department, and you will obtain the benefits sooner. What's even better is that you will find ways to start thinking in improved ways about your business sooner.

Enjoy the benefits that follow naturally from having all of us know more and be able to ask more . . . to extend our knowledge into improved forms of profitable intelligence!

Too much style, not enough content, November 23, 2000
One thing is sure after reading this book: Bernard Liautaud likes writing beautiful, impressive-sounding sentences.

A glossy writing style is probably OK in a press release or product description literature, but here it rapidly becomes tedious, and in my opinion the stuck-up prose doesn't do the book any favour.

The amount of information in the book is rather thin. Everything is pretty much explained in the first 30 pages and drags on from there.

Business Intelligence is fairly straightforward after all, and consists in "empowering" the company's employees with database query tools and Excel-like analysis software, so that they can themselves access and "leverage" the information, instead of waiting days or weeks for the IT department's troglodytes to generate reports.

Liautaud never gets too technical and real-world case studies that could have spiced up the book a bit are disappointing and are all along the lines of "We used to be in the dark but the day we deployed a Web-enabled enterprise e-business intelligence software we saw the light".

It's hard to imagine managers today not being aware of the concepts and technologies described. This very bland book seems to be targeted at the Chairmen of multinational companies still wondering what this Internet thing is all about.

The French are giving us Business 101 for the 21st century!, April 4, 2001
I have not generally recommended a business book for several years, and never anything French, but...

With all the books about e-this and e-that, you tire quickly of the torrent of buzzwords and cliches endured to read anything about sharing data on the internet, make better use of corporate data, new business paradigms, etc.

This book actually elucidates how you can leverage all the new and extant technologies going forward to great effect while staying grounded with recent case examples. Sounds simple, but try to find this information anywhere else.

The business world will change immensely because of the internet and the exponential increases in both the amount of data available and the need for business intelligence. In the years to come, management, especially in highly competitive environments, will live or die depending on their understanding of the concepts aptly explained in this book.

The best literature from France since Dumas!

---

{end of page}

(Page code from the SEO Tools, Toys, and Packages site)