The books Digital Darwinism, by Evan I Schwartz, and Customers.com, by Patricia B Seybold, offer differing views on some topics while expressing similarities on others. A notable difference in the books is the writers� focus � Schwartz stresses business reengineering using technology, especially Web applications, is needed for survival, while Seybold focuses on enhancing processes being reengineered from the customers point of view using technology when appropriate. Both of these books are relevant to today�s e-commerce and present excellent views on where we have been and where we are going.

Schwartz and Seybold both examine ways companies can improve how they do business. Both authors agree that companies need to streamline their business processes. Schwartz stresses the need for reengineering in the introduction to his book Digital Darwinism.

An even more likely scenario is this one: Perhaps the dinosaurs in this metaphor are really the gigantic transnational corporations that have ruled over their respective industries for virtual eons. Perhaps the formation of the Web itself is the cataclysmic event in a much larger evolutionary scheme. Perhaps the global auto giants, the mega banks, the bigfoot telephone companies, the media conglomerates, the consumer product colossi, the finance and insurance amalgamations, the protected species of utilities, and the sprawling retail behemoths are the ones in danger of extinction. Or perhaps a few have enough smarts to adapt into something far more flexible, responsive, and innovative. Remarkably, this too has already started happening. (page 14)

Back in the heyday of reengineering, many companies focused on the wrong things. They streamlined business processes, all right. They reengineered their businesses to make them more cost-efficient. But they left out the most important piece of the equation. They didn�t start from the outside � the end customer � and work in. � Most of the reengineering efforts that took place in the 1990�s didn�t involve the end customer, so they didn�t focus on the key priority of making it easy for customers to do business with the firm. They haven�t made a difference in keeping customers happy and loyal, coming back for more, and telling their friends about your great products and service. (page 33)

Throughout Digital Darwinism, Schwartz builds towards his seventh strategy �integrate digital commerce with absolutely everything.� Closing the section on this strategy he states �In the end, you must evolve into the ultimate hybrid enterprise � finding new ways to integrate everything that your company does online with everything that it does offline�(page 183). Schwartz has left the customer out of the equation. Even when Schwartz touches on the customer in his first strategy �build a brand that stands for solving problems,� he stops short of focusing on the end user. He states in closing the section on this first strategy �Identify a problem facing either consumers or businesses, a set of issues that no one else is doing a good job of addressing� (page 42).

This is not to say Schwartz�s book is not worth reading. It is. Both books are excellent. While both books are excellent, they should be read together with Digital Darwinism read before Customers.com. Schwartz brings out several good ideas that Seybold takes to the next level by bringing in the customer focus. Because Schwartz does not focus on the customer but on systems, he brings to the forefront several strategies Seybold overlooks.

Both Seybold and Schwartz agree that even successful companies need assistance with marketing their goods and services. The difference between the two authors is who they portray as assisting the company. Schwartz�s strategy �let affiliate partners do your marketing� focuses on the company using partners to market products and goods. He states

The Web is too vast and competitive for you to be able to build your brand on your own and successfully market all by yourself. Recruit affiliate partners to sell your products and spread your marketing message to the far corners of cyberspace. Offer your partners generous commissions for referring potential customers who end up buying from you. (page 91)

Patricia Seybold guides the reader through five steps to success and eight critical success factors. Each of these steps and critical success factors brings the reader to focus on specific actions that affect how the customer does business with a company. Seybold enhances these steps and critical success factors by case studies of sixteen companies which have successfully reengineered their systems. Hertz is an example of a case study used by Seybold.

Hertz is covered in CSF 2: Own The Customer�s Total Experience. In this section of Customers.com, Seybold states �The single most important thing you can do for your customers is to anticipate and eliminate snags and delays in their experience of dealing with you� (page 107). Summarized, Seybold lists seven �take-aways� or items that can be learned by studying how Hertz does business

1. Use customer profiles.
   
2. Use a single global customer database.
   
3. Start with the customer�s experience.
   
4. Eliminate every step that wastes customer�s time.
   
5. Proactively address the customer�s sense of anxiety. Eliminate any questions the customer might focus on.
   
6. Make it easy for the customer to use your product or service.
   
7. Reduce back end systems to a single set for all customer interaction channels. (pages 122 - 123)
   

Again, Digital Darwinism and Customers.com should be read together. Each writer presents reengineering from a different point of view. The result of these differing views is to frame a solid business, using technology to enhance customer relationships, in their readers mind.

There�s a new breed of executive in ascendancy in today�s organizations: the technology � literate executive � They�re pragmatists: they wait for proven, reliable solutions that will enhance their quality of life and help them run their businesses better. What they want is for their organizations to run better, faster, smoother and to be much more proactively responsive to their customers. They�re frustrated by antiquated information systems and organizational silos that get in the way of streamlining customer-facing business processes. (Customers.com page xvii)