Book publishers have jumped on the Internet bandwagon along with much of the rest of the world. If you stop by Barnes & Noble or Books a Million, you'll be confronted with shelf after shelf of tomes about the Internet, about building web pages, about managing websites ad virtual infinitem. But, amidst the plethora of publications that speak to the Internet phenomenon, Cyber Rules is a clear winner.

Cyber Rules is written by Siebel Systems founder Thomas M. Siebel and his colleague Pat House. Siebel is something of a computer industry phenomenon. He was employee number 50 at Oracle in 1984; in that year he was also the number one salesperson. He left Oracle in 1990 with millions in stock options and went on to rescue one company and to start another. Siebel Systems was founded in 1994 with 20 employees. Today it boasts 1600 employees and $380 million in annual sales. It delivers leading edge enterprise-class customer information systems. In other words, Siebel knows what he's talking about. He's done it - not just thought about it.

The premise of Cyber Rules is simple:

The Internet, more than any previous technology, empowers the customer . This has profound implications for business. If you're a business professional in the Internet age, you're confronting the fact that, virtually overnight, your potential customer base has exploded in size, the choices available to those customers have through the stratosphere, and hundreds of new competitors are suddenly grappling for their attention . For all but the smallest, most local, mom and pop operations, learning how to excel at E-Business is a matter of survival.

Because the customer has achieved an unprecedented level of buying clout via the Internet, every organization that hopes to survive and thrive beyond the next decade must leverage the latest E-Business technologies. In fact, according to Siebel, Already corporate leaders in the E-Business space have reengineered their internal operating structures to achieve small inventories, just-in-time manufacturing processes . automatic billing, and electronic collection.

All of this reengineering has benefited the customer, of course. But at the same time, it has enabled dramatic efficiencies at the vendor level. Companies can achieve not just economies of scale, but "economies of scope," that is, the ability to provide a wider variety of products and greater customization at lower cost.

Business-to-Business, That's the Online Ticket

Siebel emphasizes that the Internet has been wrongly categorized as an infotainment medium and as the "information superhighway." Similarly, companies that saw an easy replacement for brick and mortar retail stores were mistaken for the most part. Electronic malls, full of pioneer retailers, have generally been unsuccessful - the Internet Shopping Network is just one example. Conversely, the fate of many traditional retailers is uncertain as manufacturers consider selling directly to their ultimate consumer. According to Siebel,

An efficient electronic market in consumer goods could therefore have a substantial impact on society. It could eliminate many retail stores in favor of electronic vendors who can locate in areas with low fixed costs, because location is irrelevant on the Internet.

Just as the folks who really made money during the Gold Rush in 1849 were the ones selling picks, shovels, blue jeans and mules, it is the business-to-business market that is reaping the earliest rewards of today's internet. Siebel notes that the most dramatic benefits from electronic and online efficiencies inure to companies that sell mostly to value added resellers or to large corporations. That's why 80 percent of the money being made on the web is in business-to-business sales.

Build a Brand Name Now

It's probably always been true that the first player to enter a market with a decent product enjoys a dramatic competitive advantage. One not only grabs a ton of users, but also has the chance to make one's brand, 'The Brand.' In the analog world this might apply to Kleenex, Band-Aids, Frigidaires, Xerox, FedEx -- in the latter cases a noun even became a verb: to Xerox, to FedEx. You can't ask for much more than that.

The online world is moving with such speed that brand building is all-important. Because buyer habits will be firmly established among a huge global user base very quickly, there's no time to waste. According to Siebel, "The battles for name recognition will be won or lost over the next three years, because the greatest growth in the user base will occur during this time as more and more customers turn to online buying." He quotes Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell as saying, "You have to get revenue later, ubiquity first. That's what URL stands for." As a matter of fact, it was Schmidt, then a top exec with Sun Microsystems, who said in 1995 in Boston at one of the earliest Internet World conferences, "The Internet isn't being overhyped, it's being underhyped."

Even people who don't use the Internet have probably heard of Amazon.com. Why? Because they were first with a terrific online bookstore. And because they have built on that lead with a huge brand-building campaign that extends far into the consumer advertising realm. This lesson applies whether you are building a brand locally, regionally, nationally or globally. Pick the right name and make it a household word among your target customers.

Launch and Learn: Get on the Web Now. Fine tune later.

If you are waiting for the right moment to get online, it's right now. Siebel emphasizes, "Whatever you're using today will be practically obsolete in little more than a year ." That reality makes "Launch it now, a virtual watchword." Unless you are that tiny mom and pop super local business, you're already late. That's all the more reason to move now. Even if the site you launch isn't perfect, you need to be online, to learn what works and what doesn't, and to pursue continuous improvement. Siebel adds, "The launch and learn principle may not be conservative, but it's not reckless either."

In the case of our own website, www.BusinessNewsNow.com, we didn't get everything perfect in our first version. Our objective was to design a site that contained timely and valuable business information for our regional business community - and for individuals from outside the area that were taking an interest in Southwest Florida commerce.

In version two of BusinessNewsNow.com, you'll find it easier to get to the information you need, you'll find more timely business info from around the region and around the world, you'll be able to submit your news and event information more easily, and you'll discover much more great stuff. Some of these things we hadn't figured out last year. And some of them we couldn't even do, because the right tools weren't available. By the way, you can get more nitty gritty