Case Analysis 1: Sara Lee vs Dell vs JCPenney

With the advance of technology and the development of society, the competition in industry is increasing intense. If there is no any innovation and just standstill for a company, it will be out of business quickly and be replaced by other competitors. Under this condition, every company wants to make wise strategy to gain profits and strength their competitiveness in the industry. Information technology plays an important role when companies develop strategy.

Overview of the problems each company is facing
For Sara Lee Bakery Group (SLBG), they delivered fresh-baked goods to their retailers directly. The delivery people needed to count at the retailer’s back door. But, these retailers wanted to reduce labor cost, they reduced the number of hours their back door is open. So, for SLBG, they need more trucks, more time to accommodate the limited door open time. Obviously, it will increase large amount of cost to do this.
For Dell, Dell has a short delivery cycle after received customer’s order. Dell has a demand-pull value chain and it could decrease cost by not make too much computer ahead of schedule. However, HP’s local store availability and develops a number of unique features that are highly demanded by customers help HP to fight Dell for the top position successfully.
For JCPenney, there was about 10% money they spend, half billion dollar goes transaction. The CEO of JCPenney thought this part of money could use to develop technology. Because of the utilization of Wi-Fi, phone check-out system, and RFID in store, the tradition checkout counter could be replace by phone checkout system by any sales person in store and also include customs themselves.

Similarities of the situations
In these three cases, I think there are two main similarities.
The first similarity is in these cases information technology