The Value Factor: How Global Leaders Use Information for Growth and Competitive Advantage

Authors Mark Hurd and Lars Nyberg have brought a wealth of business management wisdom in this book. As the book is classified under business intelligence and information services, it is likely to be missed by business managers and students of management. The book defines contemporary global company to be one that collaborates effectively across the entire organization, whether worldwide or in one country. The other fascinating theme in the book is how a global business could manage effectively by centralizing goals and democratizing decisions. The best part of the book are the brief case studies from real businesses on how a concept that is explained is put into practice. The amount of wisdom packed in 130 pages makes it an outstanding book on "fact-based management" in practice.

"It's a book of staggering blandness, but in fairness, no more than thousands like it: the CEO's management manual," notes The Register in a review of the book. (...) "A title to send anyone to sleep.". It goes on to say, "The CEO may become expert at pattern recognition, but staring at the patterns doesn't help with the predictive instincts that often go into making a hit product. That's the essential risk of entrepreneurship, and it's a wildly unpredictable factor. The technocratic management culture of the modern MBA school tries to minimize that risk, and so we have remedies such as "Information Alignment", which tell us nothing. Hurd is very much a product of his time." We couldn't disagree more. Information leads to knowledge and to insights that allows one to have the "predictive instincts". Data warehousing and data mining can uncover true gold since information and not data is the basis of any wisdom - from personal life to corporate life. This short book can actually be an eye opener to those who have been sleeping or tend to. As the above review shows, one more reason to read it.

For many years, hardware and software vendors have preached the benefits of unifying databases for major companies. In recent years, there has been a strong move to open up those unified databases for more and more people in the company so that better and timelier business decisions can be made. Such an effort can cost a large company hundreds of millions and be an even larger cost in percentage of assets for smaller companies. Before deciding to move ahead, what can a leader expect to gain? What must the leader do, once deciding to go ahead, in order to be sure that the gain is achieved? Those are the helpful subjects of The Value Factor.I was very pleased to see that this book emphasized the business process of making such a change . . . rather than simply touting the potential benefits. You cannot spend potential benefits, after all.Within the book, there were lots of examples to show what kind and size of benefits can be achieved . . . and how they are achieved. I found the airline examples to be especially telling in creating fast flexibility to respond within hours to marketplace shifts. The financial services examples were also compelling, as I was reminded of how often such organizations treat us differently depending on what product of service is involved. Seeing these examples, it was also clear how much it helps streamline decision-making if everyone is looking at the same facts in the same way . . . reflecting the total situation. The book is very brief, which will be welcome to time-weary executives. It would be an excellent choice for a three hour plane flight. The only thing I didn't like about the book was the seemingly endless repetition of the need to break down independent "silos" of operations that do not cooperate with one another and have different data sets. A good related book is E-Business Intelligence by Bernard Liautaud of Business Objects. See what needs to be done . . . and empower those close to the problem to get on with it!

This book is like a clear lamp knifing through the fog of business, saying that what really matters is developing one clear unified concept of your business, declaring who you are and what you do. The key to achieving this "unified truth" is information. Most companies stack information in silos represented by business units, so one part of the company doesn't know what the other parts are doing. Authors Mark Hurd and Lars Nyberg of the NCR global information technology firm make a cogent case that the key to overcoming this shortcoming is to take information out of scattered departments and develop centralized storage facilities for its collection, processing and retrieval. Armed with this base, this "unified truth," employees can become more customer-centric. One caveat, however, is that single view companies face the danger of tunnel vision. Sometimes companies need internal, competing views to be sure they consider the correct perspective. Although this book is an NCR public relations effort, it sets out a key point: if your firm isn't making information its top priority, you're could be falling behind the curve. We highly recommend this book to leaders and future leaders.

Hurd and Nyberg call on their vast industry knowledge to provide corporate leaders with real-world examples from top companies around the globe where information gathering steers profitable business decisions.This quick read (only 132 pages) provided me with the confidence I need to drive practices within my organization to get and maintain good information for decision-making purposes.I was pleased to see leaders at Hurd and Nyberg's level, who really understand the value of a unified corporate vision based on levelheaded information management, are willing to share their insight. This is a must-read for anyone making key business decisions!