Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Automating:
Doing Things Faster
Technology is used to automate a manual
process
Doing things faster, better, cheaper
Greater accuracy and consistency
Completely automated
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Organizational Learning:
Doing Things Better
Going beyond automation
Involves learning to improve the day-to-day activities
within the process
Looking at patterns and trends
Organizational Learning
Using acquired knowledge and insights to improve
organizational behavior
Total Quality Management (TQM)
Monitoring an organization to improve quality of
operations, products, and services
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Supporting Strategy:
Doing Things Smarter
Strategic Planning
Create a vision: setting the direction
Create a standard: performance targets
Create a strategy: reaching the goal
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Types of Competitive Advantage
Low-Cost Leadership
Best prices on goods/services
Examples: Dell, Target
Differentiation
Best products or services
Examples: Porsche, Nordstrom, IBM
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Information Systems for
Competitive Advantage
A clear strategy is essential: invest in resources to
achieve competitive advantage
Sources of competitive advantage:
Best-made product
Lower costs
products
Well-known brand name
Operations
Outbound logistics
Service
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Organizational Value Chain
Internet link with Website with online
suppliers & dealers product catalog &
Computer-Aided ordering Customer service
manufacturing response system
systems
Systems &
computer-
aided
software
engineering
Computer-aided design
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Information Systems for
Competitive Advantage
The Technology/Strategy Fit
An IS implementation should create a
significant organizational change consistent
with the business strategy
Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
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Making the Business Case for a System
(identifying value provided by IS)
The Productivity Paradox (how to quantify gains?)
Measurement problems
End-user development
Strategic systems
Time lags
Redistribution
Mismanagement
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Making the Business Case for a System
Making a Successful Business Case
Arguments Based on Faith
Beliefs about org. strategy, compititive
advantage, industry forces, customer
perceptions, market share…
Ex. “I know I don’t have good data to back this up, but
I’m convince that having this CRM system will enable us
to serve our customers significantly better than do our
competitors and, as result, we’ll beat the compitition…
you just have to take it on faith”
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Making the Business Case for a System
Making a Successful Business Case
Arguments Based on Fear
notion that if the system is not implemented, the
firm will lose out to the competition or worse, go
out of business
Industry factors
Stage of maturity
Regulation
Steering Committee
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Presenting the Business Case
Convert Benefits to Monetary Terms
Devise Proxy Variables
Measure changes in terms of perceived value
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Competitive Advantage
in Being at the Cutting Edge
Deploying new technologies faster, better,
and cheaper than competitors
Using new technology in innovative ways
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Competitive Advantage
in Being at the Cutting Edge
The Need for Constant IS Innovation
On the lookout for new technologies that impact
business
E-Business Innovation Cycle
Choosing enabling/emerging technologies
Matching with economic opportunties
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Competitive Advantage
in Being at the Cutting Edge
Implications of E-Business Innovation Cycle
Begin with technology when considering
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Competitive Advantage
in Being at the Cutting Edge
The Cutting Edge vs. The Bleeding Edge
Information systems are often bought from, or
built by, someone else
An organization typically cannot patent an IS
Rivals can copy emerging information systems
Therefore, one’s IS competitive advantage can be
short-lived
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Competitive Advantage
in Being at the Cutting Edge
Requirements for Being at the Cutting Edge
Consider Porter’s competitive forces
To deploy emerging systems well:
Organization must adapt well to change
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