Mission Critical: Realizing the Promise of Enterprise Systems

Rating:
Summary: A prerequisite for e-commerce
Review: One overlooked aspect of this book and subject is its importance to electronic commerce. Davenport points out that you can't do a good job of serving customers over the Internet if you don't have your back office in order. He describes how several companies, including Cisco Systems, have connected their enterprise systems to their Internet-based customer service systems. For me this was the most useful insight in the book, though there are many more.

Rating:
Summary: A prerequisite for e-commerce
Review: One overlooked aspect of this book and subject is its importance to electronic commerce. Davenport points out that you can't do a good job of serving customers over the Internet if you don't have your back office in order. He describes how several companies, including Cisco Systems, have connected their enterprise systems to their Internet-based customer service systems. For me this was the most useful insight in the book, though there are many more.

Rating:
Summary: Good start, but difficult to finish
Review: The book gives indeed a very good introduction of what is essential when you consider introducing ESs. It really gets the message across that the real benefit of these systems is when your decision is business driven and you adjust your business processes with it. That helped me to deepen my understanding of these systems and my knowledge I got from reading quite a number of articles on the subject. But when I was about half the book it was getting tougher to continue. I really got the feeling that the incremental knowledge I was learning from continued reading was drastically going down. It is a problem I have with many of these university background writers. They feel a need to create a kind of science flavor to their subject, and start using far too many words to explain their subject. It probably was more helpful to provide more real life examples of successful and unsuccessful cases (at least that is my personal preference) The future developments chapter at the end of the book was a disaster for me. It is too technical (or scientific) and too little practical. I still have no clue of what Daverport's message is for us on this subject. Still, I would recommend the book to anyone who is considering buying an ES and has insufficient knowledge of ES, or for those who have an ES but don't feel they are really getting what they hoped for. Because, like Davenport writes in his intro somewhere, I don't know any other book who can give you the same insight as Davenport has done.

Rating:
Summary: Written by a salesman for SAP and AC
Review: The only good thing about this book was that it told of the importance to revisit the project and measure its success after go-live. Aside from that I found this book to be useless. It was clearly written by someone who has never implemented an ES. This book is what an SAP salesman would give to CIO/CEO level customers. The big bang methodology he endorses is nothing but a recipe for disaster. When this is used the only thing it ensures is that an organization will be dependent on consultants for the forseeable future. He is way off base and delivers very little proof or personal experience.

Rating:
Summary: Written by a salesman for SAP and AC
Review: The only good thing about this book was that it told of the importance to revisit the project and measure its success after go-live. Aside from that I found this book to be useless. It was clearly written by someone who has never implemented an ES. This book is what an SAP salesman would give to CIO/CEO level customers. The big bang methodology he endorses is nothing but a recipe for disaster. When this is used the only thing it ensures is that an organization will be dependent on consultants for the forseeable future. He is way off base and delivers very little proof or personal experience.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to Read, Real-life Examples for Achieving Results
Review: With an easy-to-read writing style, Davenport clearly explains how to go about getting the kind of results from ESs which business executives expect. While many people involved in implementations might get lost in the details and lose sight of the overall objective, Davenport offers extremely useful check-lists and guidelines to make sure your bosses will be happy. Finally, the multitude of real-life examples reassures the reader that the book is not just a set of theoretical hypotheses. I couldn't imagine planning a future ES or working on an existing one without knowledge of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to Read, Real-life Examples for Achieving Results
Review: With an easy-to-read writing style, Davenport clearly explains how to go about getting the kind of results from ESs which business executives expect. While many people involved in implementations might get lost in the details and lose sight of the overall objective, Davenport offers extremely useful check-lists and guidelines to make sure your bosses will be happy. Finally, the multitude of real-life examples reassures the reader that the book is not just a set of theoretical hypotheses. I couldn't imagine planning a future ES or working on an existing one without knowledge of this book.