What's on the web

Citation

(2007), "What's on the web", Strategic Direction, Vol. 23 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/sd.2007.05623dag.001

What's on the web

Top stuffwww.entrepreneur.com

Fun, fast, and well styled, the first impression of this site is truly excellent. Offering ideas and advice on topics ranging from starting a business, through to good travel destinations for the holidays, this site is as diverse as they come. A couple of the topic links do seem to lead to dead ends but there is certainly enough information contained on the site for them to be able to afford to lose these. This magazine-style site offers enough articles, advice, self-assessment checks and other features to keep one busy for hours, and it is certainly worth spending some time on. A small business encyclopaedia is provided enabling searches to be run, as are several free business tools, including forms, checklists, and calculators. A fantastic American find.

Keen to helpwww.ardentia.co.uk

“Intelligent business intelligence” is the motto here. A pretty site, well laid-out and easy to navigate, it strikes the right balance between form and function. Plenty of information is provided concerning what Ardentia does and how they operate. They offer services to commercial, healthcare and government sectors and have some very high profile clients. Much of their work revolves around database use and technology solutions and focuses on sorting the information relevant to a specific business. “Most organisations have to handle mountains of data everyday. Ardentia helps you to sort the wheat from the chaff.” Free demonstrations of some of their services are available, as is a free ten-day trial of a couple of their products. The solutions they offer are mainly web-based, and if their website is anything to go by they certainly know what they are doing.

Try againwww.secretsofsuccess.com

At first glance this site appears quite promising, although it could be mistaken for a blog site. Some of the article headings give the impression that their content will be fairly solid. Sadly this is not the case, as a quick scroll through them reveals nothing more than yet another way to promote the message of Christianity. All well and good, religion has its own place but one rather feels that this is not it. Possibly not quite what you would expect to come across when searching for business advice and related products, especially not when put across in such a patronising manner. Definitely a site to avoid.

Not quite inspiredwww.inspiris.co.uk

“Inspiris is an ethical consultancy that specialises in the contribution of business to international development and poverty reduction.” The site is fairly simplistic, maybe a little too much so, but there is no denying that the ethical consideration they employ within their business practices is to be admired. One major problem that we found with this site however was a lack of any listing of services that they actually provide. Ease of use seems to be a major factor employed in the design of this site, but unfortunately much of the content has no real substance. They are sponsored by some incredibly large corporations though, and quite a lot of information is provided regarding their various schemes and programmes set up to help the developing world. There is perhaps a shade too much jargon: “Inspiris manages not-for-profit, peer-to-peer business networks that facilitate knowledge sharing and catalyse new partnerships to maximise the positive impact of business in developing countries.” Hmmm.

Poor showwww.abenetis.com

Not the most engaging site from the off, while delving deeper does little to counteract this first impression. Fighting your way through the layout is by no means the most fun way one could spend time. It simply doesn’t work, the lack of colour doesn’t help, add in a couple of typos and you are really not onto a winner here. The “5-Pillar-Concept of Business Management” (around which the whole site focuses) follows this general pattern. “The importance of immaterial values has never been as high as today. The solutions abenetis provides include the most important non-accounting ratios and all Analysis assist to find the actual core bottleneck/problem to enable businesses to take appropriate actions to overcome actual bottlenecks.” Oh yes, that makes so much sense.

And finally

Some new quotes for the New Year:

“Marketing is merely a civilized form of warfare in which most battles are won with words, ideas, and disciplined thinking” – Albert W. Emery.

“A professional is one who does a good job even when he doesn’t feel like it” – Dr Reyer’s Reflection.

“The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle, pleasure without conscience, wealth without work, knowledge without character, business without morality, science without humanity and worship without sacrifice” – Mahatma Gandhi.

Contact uswww.emerald insight.com

For a particularly interesting and useful site you could always try the Emerald one! And if you have any favourite (or otherwise) sites that you would like us to review on these pages, please drop us an email and we will submit them to our reviewers’ usual rigorous analysis.