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Competing with

Information Technology

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• Identify several basic competitive strategies and explain how they can use information technologies to confront the competitive forces faced by a business.

• Identify several strategic uses of Internet technologies and give examples of how they give competitive advantages to a business.

Learning ObjectivesLearning Objectives

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Learning ObjectivesLearning Objectives

• Give examples of how business process reengineering frequently involves the strategic use of Internet technologies.

• Identify the business value of using Internet technologies to become an agile competitor or to form a virtual company

• Explain how knowledge management systems can help a business gain strategic advantages.

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Why Study Strategic IT?Why Study Strategic IT?

• Technology is no longer an afterthought in forming business strategy, but the actual cause and driver.

• IT can change the way businesses compete.

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Strategic View of Information SystemsStrategic View of Information Systems

• Information systems are vital competitive networks.

• Information systems are a means of organizational renewal.

• IS are a necessary investment in technologies that help a company adopt strategies and business processes that enable it to reengineer or reinvent itself in order to survive and succeed in today’s dynamic business environment.

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Strategic Information SystemsStrategic Information Systems

Definition:

• Any kind of information system that uses information technology to help an organization gain a competitive advantage, reduce a competitive disadvantage, or meet other strategic enterprise objectives.

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Competitive Forces and StrategiesCompetitive Forces and Strategies

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Competitive ForcesCompetitive Forces

Definition:

• Shape the structure of competition in its industry.

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Porter’s Competitive Forces ModelPorter’s Competitive Forces Model

To survive and succeed, a business must develop and implement strategies to effectively counter the:

• Rivalry of competitors within its industry• Threat of new entrants into an industry and its

markets• Threat posed by substitute products which

might capture market share• Bargaining power of customers• Bargaining power of suppliers

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Competitive StrategiesCompetitive Strategies

• Cost Leadership

• Differentiation

• Innovation

• Growth

• Alliance

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Cost Leadership StrategyCost Leadership Strategy

• Becoming a low-cost producer of products and services

• Finding ways to help suppliers and customers reduce their costs

• Increase costs of competitors

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Differentiation StrategyDifferentiation Strategy

• Developing ways to differentiate a firm’s products and services from its competitors’

• Reduce the differentiation advantages of competitors

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Innovation StrategyInnovation Strategy

• Development of unique products and services

• Entry into unique markets or market niches

• Making radical changes to the business processes for producing or distributing products and services that are so different from the way a business has been conducted that they alter the fundamental structure of an industry

2 - 15Copyright © 2006, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Growth StrategyGrowth Strategy

• Significantly expanding a company’s capacity to produce goods and services

• Expanding into global markets

• Diversifying into new products and services

• Integrating into related products and services

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Alliance StrategyAlliance Strategy

• Establishing new business linkages and alliances with customers, suppliers, competitors, consultants, and other companies

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Competitive Strategy ExamplesCompetitive Strategy Examples

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Other Competitive StrategiesOther Competitive Strategies

• Locking in customers or suppliers by building valuable new relationships with them.

• Building switching costs so a firm’s customers or suppliers are reluctant to pay the costs in time, money, effort, and inconvenience that it would take to switch to a company’s competitors.

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Other Competitive StrategiesOther Competitive Strategies

• Raising barriers to entry that would discourage or delay other companies from entering a market.

• Leveraging investment in information technology by developing new products and services that would not be possible without a strong IT capability.

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Advantage vs. NecessityAdvantage vs. Necessity

• Competitive Advantage – developing products, services, processes, or capabilities that give a company a superior business position relative to its competitors and other competitive forces

• Competitive Necessity – products, services, processes, or capabilities that are necessary simply to compete and do business in an industry

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Customer-Focused BusinessCustomer-Focused Business

A business that:

• can anticipate customers’ future needs.

• responds to customer concerns.

• provides top-quality customer service.

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IS in a Customer-Focused BusinessIS in a Customer-Focused Business

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Value ChainValue Chain

Definition:

• View of a firm as a series, chain, or network of basic activities that add value to its products and services, and thus add a margin of value both to the firm and its customers.

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Value ChainValue Chain

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Value ChainValue Chain

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Case #2: Using IT to tap Expert Know-HowCase #2: Using IT to tap Expert Know-How

U.S. DOC AskMe Knowledge Management System

• Automated best practices

• Automated experts’ profile creation

• Addition of numerous methods for accessing and delivering knowledge

• Integrated real-time collaborative services

• Comprehensive analytic capabilities

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Case #2: Using IT to tap Expert Know-HowCase #2: Using IT to tap Expert Know-How

Benefits

• Experts’ knowledge is organized

• Experts’ are more easily contacted

• Information is reusable saving 750 hours of repetitive work

• Return on investment is tracked

• Popular topics are identified so DOC can beef up its expertise in those areas

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Case #2: Using IT to tap Expert Know-HowCase #2: Using IT to tap Expert Know-How

1. What are the key business challenges facing companies in supporting their global marketing and expansion efforts? How is the AskMe knowledge management system helping to meet this challenge? Explain.

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Case #2: Using IT to tap Expert Know-HowCase #2: Using IT to tap Expert Know-How

2. How can the AskMe system help to identify weaknesses in global business knowledge within the Department of Commerce?

3. What other global trade situations could the AskMe system provide information about? Provide some examples.

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Case #2: Using IT to tap Expert Know-HowCase #2: Using IT to tap Expert Know-How

4. Is the AskMe system intended to help the DOC become a knowledge-creating organization? Why or why not?

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Business Process ReengineeringBusiness Process Reengineering

Definition:

• Fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, speed, and service.

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BPR vs. Business ImprovementBPR vs. Business Improvement

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Cross-Functional ProcessesCross-Functional Processes

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AgilityAgility

Definition:

• The ability of a company to prosper in rapidly changing, continually fragmenting global markets for high-quality, high performance, customer-configured products and services.

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Agile CompanyAgile Company

Definition:

• A company that can make a profit in markets with broad product ranges and short model lifetimes, and can produce orders individually and in arbitrary lot sizes.

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Mass CustomizationMass Customization

Definition:

• Providing individualized products while maintaining high volumes of production

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Agile CompetitorAgile Competitor

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Virtual CompanyVirtual Company

Definition:

• An organization that uses information technology to link people, organizations, assets, and ideas.

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Interenterprise Information SystemsInterenterprise Information Systems

Definition:

• Information systems implemented on an extranet among a company and its suppliers, customers, subcontractors, and competitors with whom it has formed alliances.

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Virtual CompanyVirtual Company

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Virtual Company StrategiesVirtual Company Strategies

• Share infrastructure and risk with alliance partners.

• Link complementary core competencies.

• Reduce concept-to-cash time through sharing.

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Virtual Company StrategiesVirtual Company Strategies

• Increase facilities and market coverage.

• Gain access to new markets and share market or customer loyalty.

• Migrate from selling products to selling solutions.

2 - 43Copyright © 2006, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Knowledge-Creating CompaniesKnowledge-Creating Companies

Definition:

• Consistently creating new business knowledge, disseminating it widely throughout the company, and quickly building the new knowledge into their products and services.

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Types of KnowledgeTypes of Knowledge

• Explicit Knowledge – data, documents, things written down or stored on computers

• Tacit Knowledge – the “how-tos” of knowledge, which reside in workers

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Knowledge ManagementKnowledge Management

Definition:• Techniques, technologies, systems, and

rewards for getting employees to share what they know and to make better use of accumulated workplace and enterprise knowledge.

Knowledge Management Systems – manage organizational learning and business know-how

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Levels of Knowledge ManagementLevels of Knowledge Management

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Case #3: Shareware Grows UpCase #3: Shareware Grows Up

How a software cooperative works• Companies pay a membership which

entitles them to use any of the intellectual property of the co-op.

• Member companies will donate intellectual property, cooperate in adapting it for other companies, help troubleshoot problems and form sub-groups to develop needed niche software for the library.

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Case #3: Shareware Grows UpCase #3: Shareware Grows Up

Benefits• Decrease in the total cost of ownership of

software

• Co-op becomes responsible for assets and also ensure that there’s a clear title so member companies can’t be sued later

• The larger the installation base, the lower the cost of ongoing maintenance

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Case #3: Shareware Grows UpCase #3: Shareware Grows Up

Challenge

• Getting members to really collaborate

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Case #3: Shareware Grows UpCase #3: Shareware Grows Up

1. Organizations are constantly striving to achieve competitive advantage, often through their information technologies. Given this constant, why does Hansen suggest that competition among members shouldn’t be an issue because the shared assets don’t bring competitive advantage? Explain.

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Case #3: Shareware Grows UpCase #3: Shareware Grows Up

2. What do you see as the potential risks associated with the Avalanche approach? Provide some examples.

3. How could other companies apply the cooperative model used by Avalanche to achieve efficiencies in areas other than software support? Explain.

2 - 52Copyright © 2006, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Case #4: Customer-Loyalty SystemsCase #4: Customer-Loyalty Systems

Satisfaction vs. Loyalty

• A satisfied customer is one who sees you as meeting expectations.

• A loyal customer, on the other hand, wants to do business with you again and will recommend you to others.

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Case #4: Customer-Loyalty SystemsCase #4: Customer-Loyalty Systems

• A good loyalty program combines customer feedback and business information with sophisticated analytics to produce actionable results.

• With good customer loyalty technology, IT can wire the voice of the customer back into the enterprise.

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Case #4: Customer-Loyalty SystemsCase #4: Customer-Loyalty Systems

How can IT help?• Gathering customer experience data by e-mail

rather than telephone dramatically reduces survey cycle times

• Can build in validated, multivariate measures of loyalty into the software

• Software-generated models can accurately predict customer’s purchasing behavior

• IT can be used to deliver rewards to customers based on predictive analysis

2 - 55Copyright © 2006, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Case #4: Customer-Loyalty SystemsCase #4: Customer-Loyalty Systems

1. Does CDW’s customer loyalty program give them a competitive advantage? Why or why not?

2. What is the strategic value of Harrah’s approach to determining and rewarding customer loyalty?

3. What else could CDW and Harrah’s do to truly become a customer-focused businesses? Visit their websites to help you suggest several alternatives.

2 - 56Copyright © 2006, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

SummarySummary

• Information technologies can support many competitive strategies including cost leadership, differentiation, innovation, growth and alliance.

• IT can help• Build customer-focused businesses• Reengineer business processes• Businesses become agile companies• Create virtual companies• Build knowledge-creating companies

2 - 57Copyright © 2006, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

End of Chapter

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