Information undoubtedly represents one of the key competitive weapons of the next decade, whether it takes the form of tracking the shopping habits of individual customers or changing the price of airline tickets minute by minute to take advantage of changes in demand. The implications for management are huge yet most companies are still at the early stages of trying to understand how they can extract maximum value for their information assets. This book looks at the impact of this information revolution and shows how companies can exploit information for competitive advantage.

Business in a Virtual World: Exploiting Information for Competitive Advantage (Macmillan Business)

Business & Money

Czerniawska, Fiona

Potter, G.

International

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Over the last decade, there has been a substantial rise in the number of knowledge-intensive firms - constituted primarily of professionals. The core assets of these businesses are the people themselves. Handle them badly, and they may defect or stall. Successful managers of knowledge-intensive firms must create meaning among and inspire their employees, to ensure high performance. To achieve this, leaders must understand how to target each employee’s ambitions and challenges to facilitate their personal and professional development. This book examines what sets knowledge-intensive firms apart from other types of organizations, and the resultant organizational and strategic differences in business models, talent management, and client-handling approaches. The authors bring their own complementary perspectives on the subject: one, as the manager of a private consulting firm with a strong research background; another, as a business school professor whose practice-based skills are fundamental to his work; and a third, a world leading commentator on professional service firms acting as a consultant, business school researcher and a manager. Ejler, Poulfelt and Czerniawska present a new model for transforming the management of knowledge-intensive firms, which is supported throughout with practical examples and cases.

Managing the Knowledge-Intensive Firm

Poulfelt, Flemming

Ejler, Nicolaj

Industries

Routledge

The world's leading consultants tackle real projects and make tangible differences for their clients. Through real-world case studies -- including examples from the International Olympic Committee, Sun Microsystems and London's Metropolitan Police Service -- this text provides an understanding of the relationship between top management consultant teams and their clients. Organized in seven categories: Change management, human resources, operational performance, business strategy, technology exploitation, outsourcing and electronic trading. Published in association with the Management Consultancies Association.

Management Consulting in Practice: A Casebook of International Best Practice

May, Paul

Kogan Page.

Every organization consists of two parts: the physical and the virtual. Traditionally, it has been a company's physical assets that determined its success. In the future, it will be its virtual assets”knowledge. Business in a Virtual World explains the new economic laws that apply to this scenario, describes how leading-edge companies are exploiting the opportunities offered, and provides the reader with a practical tool kit to ensure survival and success in this new world.

Business in a Virtual World

Potter, Gavin

Human Resources

Purdue University Press

Public and private sector organisations are spending huge amounts of money buying professional services, and most are doing it badly, without sufficiently rigorous procurement processes or an adequate understanding of the marketplace, resulting in wasted money and disappointing outcomes. 
Even among those organisations with formal procurement processes and techniques, many are applying them inappropriately and therefore acheive similary poor results. On the other side of the fence, many professional services firms don't understand how the increasing application of procurement processes could affect the way they get business and work with clients, the way they charge and, ultimately, their profitability. Furthermore, while they are working together, both professional services providers and their clients too often behave in ways that reduce the potential benefits to both parties. Using real examples from a range of private sector firms, government departments and the professional services firms themselves, this book explores what users and providers of professional services need to do to ensure that the users' money is well spent and the providers' earnings are well earned. "A practical and thought provoking guide that gets to the heart of the matter about what differentiates this category of spend."—Helen Wilber FCIPS, Senior Procurement Manager, Professional Services, Group Procurement, Royal Mail "This insightful book will help buyers and providers of professional services get a better understanding of the issues – and achieve better results."—Lindsay Morgan, Partner and Head of Global Real Estate, Norton Rose LLP and Group

Buying Professional Services: How to Get Value for Money from Consultants and Other Professional Service Providers

SMITH, PETER

wiley

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