CHAPTER 3 - STRATEGIC INITIATIVES FOR IMPLEMENTING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

                                                Strategic Initiatives

Organization can undertake high-profits strategic initiatives including :-

• Supply Chain Management (SCM)
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

                                                               

                             

                                        SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT 

                                                       (SCM)

• Involve the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and rofitability.
• Four basic components of SCM includes :-

1. Supply Chain Strategy- Strategy for managing all resources to meet customer demand.
2. Supply Chain Partner- Partners throughout the supply chain that deliver finished products, raw materials and services.
3. Supply Chain Operation- Schedule for production activities.
4. Supply Chain Logistic- Product delivery process.

Effectiveness and efficient SCM system can enable an organization to :

• Decrease the power of its buyers.
• Increase its own supplier power.
• Increase switching costs to reduce the threat of substitute products or services.
• Create entry barriers thereby reducing the threat of new entrants.
• Increase efficiencies while seeking a competitive advantage through cost leadership.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

(CRM)

• Involves managing all aspects of a customer's relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and an organization's profitability.
• Many organizations. such as Charles Schwab and Kaiser Permanente, have obtained great success through the implementation of CRM systems.
• CRM is not just technology, but a strategy, process, and business goals that an organization must embrace on an enterprisewide level.
• CRM can enable an organization to :

1. Identify types of customers
2. Design individual customer marketing campaigns
3. Treat each customer as an individual
4. Understand customer buying behaviors

BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING

(BPR)

• BUSINESS PROCESS - A standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific tasks, such as processing a customer's order.
• BPR - The analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises.
• The purpose of BPR is to make all business processes best-in-class.

                                          Finding Opportunity Using BPR

• A company can improve the ways it travels the road by moving from foot to horse and the horse to the car.
•  BPR looks at taking a different path, such as an airplane which ignore the road completely.

ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING

(ERP)

• Integrates all departments and functions throughout an organization into a single IT system so that employees can make decisions by viewing enterprisewide information on all business operations.
• ERP systems collect data from across an organization and correlates the data generating an enterprisewide view. 

  Well , thats all for chapter 3 . Thanks for reading my blog :)

                                           

CHAPTER 2 - IDENTIFYING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

What is competitive advantage ?

• a product or service that an organization's customers place a greater value on than similar offerings from a competitor.
• unfortunately, CA is temporary because competitors keep duplicate the strategy.
• then, the company should start the new competitive advantage.

Michael Porter's Five Forces Model

Buyer Power

• high - when buyers have many choices of whom to buy.
• low  - when their choices are few.
• to reduce buyer power (and create competitive advantage), an organization must make it more attractive to buy from the company not from the competitors.
• best practices of IT-based - loyalty program in travel industry (e.g. rewards on free airline tickets or hotel stays).

Supplier Power

• high - when buyers have few choices of whom to buy from.
• low - when their choices are many. (best practices of IT to create competitive advantage, e.g. B2B marketplace - private exchange allow a single buyer to posts it needs and then open the bidding to any supplier  who would care to bid. Reverse auction is an auction format in which increasingly lower bids).

Threat of Substitute Products & Services

• high - when there are many alternatives to a product or service.
• low - when there are few alternatives from which to choose.
• ideally, an organization would like to be on a market in which there are few substitute of their product or services.

Threat of New Entrants

• high - when it is easy for new competitors to enter a market.
• low - when there are significant entry barriers to entering a market.
• entry barriers is a product or service feature that customers have come to expert from organization to compete and survive.
• best practices of IT - e.g. new bank must offers online paying bills, acc monitoring to compete.

Rivalry among existence competitors

• high - when competition is fierce in a market.
• low - when competition is more complacent.
• best practices of IT - wal-mart and its suppliers using IT-enabled system for communication and track product at aisles by effective tagging system.

The Three Generics Strategies

Cost Leadership

• becoming a low-cost producer in the industry allows the company to lower prices to customers.
• competitors with higher costs cannot afford to compete with the low-cost leader on price.

Differentiation

• create competitive advantage by distinguishing their products on one or more features important to their customers.
• unique features or benefits may justify price differences and stimulate demand.
• ex : i-care by Proton.

Focused Strategy

• target to a niche market
• concentrates on either cost leadership or differentiation.

The Value Chains - Targeting Business Processes

• supply chain - a chain or series of processes that adds value to product & service for customer.
• add value to its products and services that support a profit margin for the firm.

                                                      

CHAPTER 1 - BUSINESS DRIVEN TECHNOLOGY

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY’S ROLE IN BUSINESS

-Information technology is everywhere in business.

                                             

Learning outcomes

- compare management information system (MIS) and information technologies (IT)

- describe the relationship among people, information technology, and information

- identify four different department in a typical business and explain how technology helps them to work     together.

- compare the four the different types of organizational information cultures and decide which cultures applies to your school.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY’S ROLE IN BUSINESS

 -Information technology is everywhere in business.

                                       

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BASICS

- Information technology (IT) - a field concerned with the use of technology in managing and processing information.

- Information technology is an important enabler of business success and innovation

- Management information system (MIS)-a general name for the business function and academic discipline covering the application of people, technologies, and procedures to solves business problems.

- MIS is a business function, similar to Accounting, Finance, Operations, and Human Resources.

 - When beginning to learn about information technology is important to understand

     *Data, information, and business intelligence IT resources.

     *IT cultures.

Information 

 - Data-raw facts that describe the characteristic of an event.

 Exp - number of student of UiTM MALACCA

- Information-data converted into a meaningful and useful context.

- Business intelligence-applications and technologies that are used to support decision making effort.

                         

    

IT Resources

• People use
• Information technology to work with
• Information

IT Cultures

•  Organizational information cultures include:

1. Information Functional Culture - employees use information as a means of exercising influence of power over others. For example, a manager in sales refuses to shares information with marketing to need the sales manager’s input each time a new sales strategy is developed.
2. Informational-Sharing Cultures-

Employees across departments trust each other to use information (especially about problem and failures) to improve performance.

     3. Information - Enquiring Cultures

Employees across department search for information to better understand the futures and align themselves with current trends and new directions. 

     4. Information - Discovery Culture

Employees across department are open to new insight about crisis and radical changes and seek ways to create competitive advantages.

Assalamualaikum :) i'm still newbie . Sila tunjuk ajar .Nama saya panjang tapi orang panggil nik je . Kalau ada pape yang salah atau tak kena , sila comment bawah . :) saya ni budak baru belajar . okay saya nak cerita sikit ni . Hari ni dah masuk 10 ramadhan dan hari ni laa first saya tak bangun sahur . Tu jee kaybye :)