Book Reviews: The Informatics Handbook — A guide to multimedia communications and broadcasting:

PART 2 System development I would have thought here that more could have been made of the systems definition and the holistic approach. Again, the importance of the customer is mentioned along with the skills required in communicating the advantages and profits from systems theory. I found this a useful chapter. The problem of knowledge-intensive products and systems, marketing and selling are also introduced at this stage along with all relevant problems. This proves to be a very useful insight into the major problem areas. Another good chapter on communication skills that states communication is the future! With the strategy-development section, some examples of financial ratio analysis would have been useful to measure and weigh the profitability analysis of the case studies. The section on Synergy and Resistance to Change could have been made a lot more of, especially with management of change happening around us day after day! The author then describes the need to recruit business development leaders and business engineers. This theme does recur throughout the book, time and time again. Part 2 was also a good read. Overall, the book is about the understanding of your products, your competitors products, customer applications and how your product benefits them. It is also strong on customer-perceived value (CPV). The person that understands this process, is then known as the business engineer. The book covers the subject in a clear and concise way. There are obviously the odd weaknesses with the book, some of which I have already mentioned. There are others, such as lack of actual performance measurements on the case studies and the lack of figures and graphs to help complement some of the arguments. Nevertheless, it is an excellent read, although the asking price of £48.00 will deter many a student and practitioner from purchasing the book. The main strength of the book is its determination to prepare for the new Millennium 2000 and onwards, with the proposal that the business engineer is the urgent and important required resource. My difficulty here, is that I think these people may already exist but with other fashionable job titles! LESLIE MITCHELL Department of Manufacturing Systems Engineering, University of Hertfordshire