...IT as a Competitive Advantage Marcus Liubakka The College of Saint Scholastica Introduction In 2003, Nicholas Carr, published a controversial article titled “IT Doesn’t Matter”. The premise of his article defines IT as a digital data infrastructure, and compares its build-out to previous impactful infrastructure build-outs like electricity and the railroad. Carr claims that IT has become a commodity, and businesses can no longer use their IT as a competitive advantage. This paper will further analyze Carr’s article, and make recommendations as to how businesses can leverage IT as a competitive advantage for the future. Analysis Rationale To fully understand how a business can leverage IT as a competitive advantage, one must fully understand the concept. In short, a business has a competitive advantage if it has the ability to provide an added value to its customers that its competitors cannot. A competitive advantage is also obtained by providing a value to a customer equal to its competitors, but with a lower cost. There are many factors which play into achieving a competitive advantage, however, organizations need to focus on sustainable competitive advantages. “In his book Competitive Advantage, Porter claims the ‘fundamental basis of above-average performance in the long run is sustainable competitive advantage’” (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013, p. 28). A sustainable competitive advantage is predicated on successfully creating barriers to erosion (Piccoli & Ives, 2005)...
Words: 1855 - Pages: 8
...actions to develop a more appealing business model than rivals. | B. | plans involving alignment of organizational activities and strategic objectives. | C. | offensive and defensive moves to generate revenues and increase profit margins. | D. | competitive moves and approaches that managers have developed to grow the business, attract and please customers, conduct operations, and achieve targeted objectives. | E. | its strategic vision, its strategic objectives, and its strategic intent. | | 3. | The competitive moves and business approaches a company's management is using to grow the business, compete successfully, attract and please customers, conduct operations, respond to changing economic and market conditions, and achieve organizational objectives is referred to as its A. | strategy. | B. | mission statement. | C. | strategic intent. | D. | business model. | E. | strategic vision. | | 4. | A company's strategy is most accurately defined as A. | management's approaches to building revenues, controlling costs, and generating an attractive profit. | B. | management's game plan for growing the business, attracting and pleasing customers, conducting operations, and achieving financial and market performance objectives. | C. | management's concept of "where we are headed." | D. | the business model that a company's board of directors has approved for outcompeting rivals and making the company...
Words: 7127 - Pages: 29
...Unless there is a persuasive basis for it, the customers and competitors will not easily let the firm generate revenues above costs. So a strong foundation must be laid for achieving this objective by formulating an economic logic. For example the New York Times is able to charge readers a very high price because of its exceptional journalistic quality. The various economic logic can be:- * Lowest costs through scale advantages * Lowest costs through scope and replication advantages * Premium prices due to unmatchable service * Premium prices due to proprietary product features From the above description of various elements of a strategy it is evident that strategic comprehensiveness is vital and the following must be kept in mind: • All five are important elements of strategy that require to be proper and intently implemented. • The five elements call not only for choice, but also for preparation and investment. As these require certain capabilities that cannot be generated impulsively. • All five elements must align with and support each other. • These elements of...
Words: 839 - Pages: 4
...Strategic Plan, Part I: Conceptualizing a Business BUS/475 October 7, 2013 Strategic Plan, Part I: Conceptualizing a Business Worlds Apart is a new concept restaurant that incorporates different dishes from all over the world into one restaurant. There will be amazing food dishes from Ireland, Germany, Mexico, Italy, France, China, and Greece, and of course, good ole down home southern dishes as well. Mission Statement Worlds Apart inspires to be a high-quality restaurant that meets and exceeds all expectations. The restaurant will offer a diverse menu from around the world using natural ingredients of the highest quality possible, and still offer moderate prices. We will give our employees the best training in respect, courtesy, and service better to assist our customers. We will use environmentally safe products to protect our ecosystem and the community around us to help reduce our carbon footprint. We strive to be an internationally known household name for our excellent service and high-quality foods in a way that will help us grow and expand profitably. Vision Statement Within the next five years, Worlds Apart will be a well-known “five star” restaurant in Southern Kentucky by combining exquisite customer service and perfectly prepared meals that creates a unique dining experience. Values and Guiding Principles Accountability-being responsible and taking ownership for our actions. This is essential to preserve our customers and societies trust and protect...
Words: 1143 - Pages: 5
...a strong position in all their chosen markets worldwide, based on leading edge technology, total quality and high manufacturing efficiency, bringing the automotive, aerospace and industrial sectors to a better balance in their contribution to group sales and profits, achieving performance and profit levels which match and beat those of their international competitors in all their businesses, enhancing the value they are able to provide to their existing and potential customers, and developing a company culture that encourages and rewards enterprise, professionalism and flexibility at every level in the organization. In order for these objectives be achieved by Lanchester, Tom Grant created the concept of a Competitiveness Achievement Plan. This plan would help support the company’s strategy and objectives due to the fact that it required every department to produce a plan that would demonstrate how they are capable of matching the performance of its closest competitors in the same market or how it can be even more successful in the same market. With this plan being fully functional it is easy to see Lanchester rising to the top of the industry but as a result of poor execution, this company would fail at achieving their objectives. A few different factors played a part in causing the Strategic Leadership Plan at Lanchester to ultimately fail. Tom Grant’s first mistake was that he was trying to accomplish too much too quickly. Tom was absolutely determined to turn the business...
Words: 1478 - Pages: 6
...are able to produce world-class quality goods/services can compete; thus, it is imperative that an organization incorporates a vision of overall quality, known as Total Quality Management, or “TQM,” that permeates throughout its entire organization and contributes to a sustainable competitive advantage. Competitive advantage denotes a firm’s ability to achieve market superiority over its competitors. In the long run, a sustainable competitive advantage provides above-average performance. Typically, a company’s competitive advantage and the strategy to attain one are achieved through two main components: • Cost Leadership: Many firms gain competitive advantage by establishing themselves as the low-cost leader in an industry. They emphasize achieving economies of scale and finding cost advantages from all sources. A cost leader can achieve above-average performance if it can command prices at or near the industry average. However, it cannot do so with an inferior product. The product must be perceived as comparable with competitors or the firm will be forced to discount prices well below competitors’ prices to gain sales – otherwise, this could cancel any benefits that result from cost advantage. • Differentiation: To achieve differentiation, a firm must be unique in its industry along some dimensions that are widely valued by customers. It selects one or more attributes that customers...
Words: 823 - Pages: 4
...Competitive Advantage Paper Strategic Management MGT/498 Competitive Advantage Paper Riordan Manufacturing has several competitive advantages it can establish, which coincide with previously researched organizations. This paper discusses those advantages and competitive strategies meant to improve innovation and the sustainability both domestically and globally. An explanation and estimation of how these strategies will affect sustainability of long-term performance and an explanation of the impact of the global market on Riordan’s business strategy concludes the paper. Competitive Advantage Every organization can establish some type of competitive advantage. Recent research about the competitive advantages of FedEx, Southwest, Toyota, McCain Foods, and Cargill assists in identifying Riordan’s competitive advantage. The first step in creating a competitive advantage is creating a mission statement and developing a strategic plan. Firms that operate with a strategic plan develop a focus and tend to have everyone in the organization aligned. Introducing unique core products or services leads to the establishment of a competitive advantage. In the case of FedEx, the core service is transporting products...
Words: 1001 - Pages: 5
...Competitive advantage is when a company has, or does anything exceptionally well that consumers value but the competition cannot match or imitate. This is usually demonstrated in terms of a lower cost or a differentiated product or service. Therefore, the challenge for companies is to find a way of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage over the other competing products and firms in the marketplace. Company heads and business executives are tasked with developing strategies in order to maintain a competitive edge. One of the world’s largest online retailers, Amazon.com has successfully dominated the online retail marketplace since its inception in 1994. Amazon.com begun as one of the first companies to sell books online, due to the success of its online bookstore, they diversified into many other product lines and services. Today, they are known as a multinational e-commerce company that offers a wide variety of goods and services ranging from consumer electronics, books, music, movies, home improvement goods, clothing and jewelry. On the non-retail front, Amazon.com also provides web and technology services to companies. Its mission is “To be earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices (Amazon, 2015). Amazon continues to evolve quietly in ways that enable it to be extremely competitive in four areas: cost leadership, strategic acquisitions...
Words: 508 - Pages: 3
...profitability without providing proprietary operational advantages, it is more important than everfor companies to distinguish themselves through strategy. The winners will be those that view the Internet as a complement to, not a cannibal of, traditional ways of competing. Strategy and the by Mich36l E. Porter Internet I "^ INTERNET is an extremely important new J technology, and it is no surprise that it has received so much attention from entrepreneurs, executives, investors, and business observers. Caught up in the general fervor, many have assumed that the Internet changes everything, rendering all the old rules about companies and competition obsolete. That may be a natural reaction, but it is a dangerous one. It has led many companies, dot-coms and incumbents alike, to make bad decisions - decisions that have eroded the attractiveness of their industries and undermined their own competitive advantages. Some companies, for example, have used Internet technology to shift the basis of competition away from quality, features, and service and toward price, making it harder for anyone in their industries to turn a profit. Others have forfeited important proprietary advantages by rushing into misguided partnerships MARCH 2001 63 strategy and t h e Internet and outsourcing relationships. Until recently, the negative effects of these actions have been obscured by distorted signals from the marketplace. Now, however, the consequences are becoming evident. The...
Words: 8134 - Pages: 33
...Confirming Pages PART 1 SA M PL E C H AP TE R Concepts and Techniques for Crafting and Executing Strategy tho29503_ch01_001-017.indd 1 12/10/12 4:52 PM Confirming Pages WHAT IS STRATEGY AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? AP Learning Objectives TE R CHAPTER 1 Learn what we mean by a company’s strategy. LO 2 Grasp the concept of a sustainable competitive advantage. LO 3 Develop an awareness of the four most basic strategic approaches for winning a sustainable competitive advantage. LO 4 Understand that a company’s strategy tends to evolve over time because of changing circumstances and ongoing management efforts to improve the company’s strategy. LO 5 Learn why it is important for a company to have a viable business model that outlines the company’s customer value proposition and its profit formula. LO 6 Learn the three tests of a winning strategy. M PL E C H LO 1 SA Strategy means making clear-cut choices about how to compete. Jack Welch – Former CEO of General Electric If your firm’s strategy can be applied to any other firm, you don’t have a very good one. David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad – Consultants and professors One must have strategies to execute dreams. Azim Premji – CEO Wipro Technologies and one of the world’s richest people tho29503_ch01_001-017.indd 2 12/10/12 4:52 PM AP Many factors enter into a full explanation of a company’s performance, of course. Some come from the external environment; others are internal to the firm...
Words: 7702 - Pages: 31
...and implementation- chapter 6 Strategic- means to take the long term view – and see the big picture, indluding the organisation and the competitive environment and consider how they fit together. What is strategic management - Set of decisions and action sused to formulate and implement startegies that will provide a competitively superior fit between an organisation and its environment so as to achieve organisational goals. E.g. what changes and trends are occuring in the environment in respect to rival companies. - A company who has strategically prusued a stragey of growth in the australin and asian markets is syd Howard firworks international who conducted fireworks at 2006 melbourne commonwealth olympics and later on provided spectaculr fireworks for the 2010 commonwealth games. Purpose of strategy- chossing how the organisation will be different - First step is to define an explicit startegy, which is the paln of action that describes recources allocation and acticities for dealing with the enviroment, achieving a competitive advantage and attaining oganisational goals. - Competitive advantage; refers to what sets the organisationa apart from others and provides it with a edge for meeting customers or client needs in the marketplace. - Strategy changes overtime to suite environmental conditions - To achieve competitive advantage companies muct target customers, cahieve synergy, crate value, exploit core competence. Target customers - It defines customers and which...
Words: 332 - Pages: 2
...Can companies gain competetive advantage from multicultural differences in their workforce ? As the business world gets ever more connected, it is more critical than ever for global organizations to recruit, develop, and retain multicultural leaders who can navigate the myriad opportunities and challenges their companies face. Multicultural workforce can offer cultural competence or cultural intelligence; this can allow them to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. For example, they may have more than one ethnicity or spent time working abroad, where they likely would have experienced adjusting to a different culture. This can make them more culturally sensitive than a manager who hasn't worked with people from other cultures or regions. Managing diversity is about recognizing the unique contribution each employee can make to the organization. It is about creating an environment in which everyone feels valued, welcomed, and able to make an important contribution toward the attainment of corporate objectives. Additionally, companies facing challenges in competing global marketplace for market share can use diversity as "competitive advantage" in a multicultural environment with a diverse pool of talented and experienced individuals who can bring innovation and creativity to the organization. Diversity is not only associated to limited attributes that can be observed but also to those invisible characteristics such as differences in educational background, creativity...
Words: 900 - Pages: 4
...paper will provide research regarding the internal and external environments for each of the three corporations. The changing environment in the marketplace will provide each business with the challenges and opportunities for competing and growing each business. The companies must adapt to the changes in the business environment for the long term survival. This paper indentifies how each company will create value and sustain its competitive advantage through the business strategy. The guidelines of each business will be explored and how each business will follow these guidelines to meet the business’ visions and missions. How effective these guidelines for each business will be explored. These guidelines will be highlighted and its effectiveness for the business for strategic effectiveness the each is using. Use of environment scanning directs the company’s budget in advertising and how much is spent on marketing. Environmental Scanning “Environmental scanning is the monitoring, evaluation, and dissemination of information from the external and internal environments to key people within the corporation” (Hunger & Wheelen, 2010, p. 98). The environment scanning for each company will be examined from each company’s strategy for the sales of the e-reader. Apple Inc. Apple Inc. has several competitive advantages over Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble that include name recognition, the simple branding...
Words: 1063 - Pages: 5
...Competitive Advantages in Today’s Global Climate Ovelinda Garcia, Justin Hightower, Shyann Fontenot, Alex Jacobs MGT/498 July 14, 2013 Perry Martin Competitive Advantages In Today’s Global Climate Organizational sustainability and viability occur when a business strives to set itself apart from its competitors. Organizations that seek to become and maintain themselves as industries leaders typically thrive in the global marketplace. Industry dominance is dependent upon the development and implementation of corporate strategies. Organizations that continuously seek to examine their portfolios, improve operational activities, conduct research and development, and implement their strategic planning and strategies are innovated and profitable; both key characteristics in maintaining the competitive advantage within the global marketplace. Leading organizations analyze and predict the changing environment and situations in which they operate in and perform with the objective to maintain competitive advantage and sustainability. Riordan Manufacturing is poised to capitalize on establishing the organization as an industry leader in using polymer materials and providing solutions to its customer base. The global plastics manufacturing giant’s rigorous focus on R&D sets the company advantageously as a leader in identifying trends. Although the company’s initial focus was on...
Words: 1280 - Pages: 6
...Riordan Competitive Advantages MGT/498 January 25, 2012 Riordan’s Competitive Advantages The research will describe which competitive advantages Riordan has in common with McDonald’s and Burger King. This study will estimate, which competitive strategies Riordan could use to improve innovation and sustainability of business operations both in the United States and in the global market. Research will explain why those competitive strategies were chosen and estimate how they may affect sustainability of long-term organizational performance. The examination will also explain how the global market would affect the business strategy of Riordan. Riordan Organization McDonald’s and Burger King The McDonald’s Corporation and the Riordan Manufacturing Company are both main industry leaders in their own field. One major competitive advantage that each company has in common is differentiating their products. Each company has a variety of items that meets the need of their consumers. The three companies sell both nationally and internationally. Burger King, Riordan, and McDonald’s increase their sales by offering price discounts, and sale promotions to ensure that their prices are affordable to everyone in need. All three companies use cost leadership, focus, and differentiation tactics to gain a competitive advantage over their competition. Another commonality between the three companies is that they use some type of reward and incentives program to ensure that...
Words: 1122 - Pages: 5
