Chapter 3: Strategic Initiatives for Implemeting Competitive Advantages,

For today lecture I had learn about strategic initiatives for implementing competitive advantages which is in chapter three.

This chapter introduces my classmates and me about high profile strategic initiatives that an organization can undertake to help it gain competitive advantages and business efficiencies.

What is supply chain management (scm) what I have been learn SCM involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.

The four basic components of supply chain management are:-

1.        Supply chain strategy- The strategy for managing all the resources required to meet customer demand for all product and services.

2.        Supply chain partners- The partners chosen to deliver finished products, raw partners relationships monitoring metrics.

3.        Supply chain operation- The schedule for production activities including testing, packaging, and preparation for delivery. Measurements for this component include productivity and quality.

4.        Supply chain logistics- The products delivery processes and elements including orders, warehouses, carriers, defectives product returns, and invoicing.

 

                                                                                                                                                      

Effective and efficient supply chain management systems can enable an organization to:

·         -Decrease the power of its buyer

·         -Increase its own supplier power

·         -Increase switching costs to reduce the threat of substitute products or           services.

Customer relationship management (CRM) involves managing all aspects of a customer’s relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and organizations profitability.

What is Business process?

Business process is a standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing customers’ orders.

What is Business process reengineering (BPR)

BPR is the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprise.

What is enterprise Resources Planning (ERP)

ERP here means integrates all departments and function throughout an organization into a single IT system. So that employees can make decisions by viewing enterprisewide information on all business operations.

THE END =,+

Tutorial: Past year Question

MARCH 2013 (Part C)

A) Describe five (5) primary value activities?

Primary value activities:

1.  Inbound logistic: acquires raw materials and resources and distributes to manufacturing as required.
2.  Operations: transforms raw material or inputs into good and services.
3.  Outbound logistic: distributes goods and services to customers.
4.  Marketing and sales: promotes, prices, and sells products to customers.
5.  Service: provides customers supports after the sale of goods and services.

OCTOBER 2012 (Part C)

A) Explain four (4) organizational information cultures.

   

1)   Information-Functional Culture - Employees use information as a means of exercising influence or power over others. For example, a manager in sales refuses to share information with marketing. This causes marketing to need the sales manager’s input each time a new sales strategy is developed.

2)   Information-Sharing Culture  - Employees across departments trust each other to use information (especially about problems and failures) to improve performance.

3)   Information-Inquiring Culture - Employees across departments search for information to better understand the future and align themselves with current trends and new directions.

4)   Information-Discovery Culture - Employees across departments are open to new insights about crisis and radical changes and seek ways to create competitive advantages

2) A) Describe three (3) Porter Generic Strategies. Support your answer with example

1) 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.

2) 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/or stimulate demand.

3) Focused strategy 

 •Target to a niche market

    •Concentrates on either cost leadership or differentiation.

MARCH 2012 (Part C- Question 2)

2) Porter's Five Forces Model is a one of common tools used in industry to analyze and

develop competitive advantages. List and describe each of the five (5) forces in Porter's Five

Forces Model: 

1) 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 ) 

2) 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 : 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. 

3)  Threat of Substitute products & Service

• 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 substitutes of their product or services.
• Best practices of IT
• E.g. Electronic product -same function different brands

4) 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 expect from organizations and must be offered by entering organization to compete and survive.
• Best practices of IT
• E.g. new bank must offers online paying bills, acc monitoring to compete.

5)  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.
• Reduce cost by using effective supply chain.

Chapter 2: Identifying Competitive Advantages

As we know running a company today is similar to leading an army.

What I mean here, the top manager will give the right direction and completing their goals and objectives.

IDENTIFYING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES.

Competitive advantages is a feature of a product or service on which customers place a greater value than they do on similar offerings from a competitors.

UNFORTUNATELY, competitive advantages are typically temporary, because competitors often quickly seek ways to duplicate them.

First-move advantages occurs when a company can singnificantly increase its market share by being first with a new competitive advantages

Competitive intelligence is the process og gathering information about the competitive environment, including competitors plans, activities, and products to improve a company ability to succeed.

THE FIVE FORCE MODEL- EVALUATING INDUSTRY ATTRACTIVENESS.

BUYER POWER

Buyer power is the ability of buyers to affect the price they must pay for an item.

Switching Costs, costs that make customers reluctant to switch to another product or service

Loyalty programs which rewards customers based on their spending .

SUPPLIER POWER

Supply chain consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in obtaining raw materials or a product.

Power is the supplliers ability to influence the prices they charge for supplies (including, materials, labour and services)

THREAT OF SUBSTITUTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES

Threat of substitute products or services is high when there are many alternatives to a product or services and law when there are few alternatives from which to choose.

THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS

Threat of new entrants it is high when it is easy for new competitors to enter a market and low when there are significant entry barriers to joining a market.

RIVARLY AMONG EXISTING COMPETITORS

This is high when competitors is fierce in a market and low when competitors are more complacent.




THE THREE GENERIC STRATEGIES- CHOOSING A BUSINESS FOCUS. 

Chapter 1: Business Driven Technology

COMPETING IN THE INFORMATION AGE

A fact is the confirmation or validation of an event or object. In past, people primarily learned facts from  books but today we can simply pushing a button people can find out anything from anywhere at any time. 

Nowadays we live in the information age when infinite quantities of facts are widely available to anyone who use computer. 

This is simply not true when we think only student well versed in advanced technology can compete in the information age. 

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY'S ROLE IN BUSINESS.

Why do we need study information technology? the answer is simple which is information technology is everywhere in business.

Understanding information technology provides great insight to anyone learning about business.

*Information Technology's impact on business operations.

Customer Service, Finance, Sales and Marketing and IT operations is a example of business functions receiving the greatest benefits from information technology. we can see that Customer Servise has get 70% benefits from information technology.

Information Technology Project Goals which is reducing cost, improving productivity and generating growth is not easy.

Implementing a new accounting system or marketing plan is not likely to generate long term growth or reduce costs across an entire organization.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BASICS.

Information technology is a field concerned with the use of technology in managing and processing information.

Management Information Systems(MIS) is a general name for the business functions and academic discipline covering the application of people, technologies, and producers-collectively called information systems-to solve business problems.

THE CHALLENGE: DEPARTMENTAL COMPANIES.

Companies are typically organized by department or functional area such as:

 THE SOLUTION: MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS.

A systems is a collection of parts that link to achieve a common purpose.

System thinking is a way of monitoring the entire system by viewing multiple inputs being processed or transformed to produce outputs while continuously gathering feedback on each part ( see figure below).

Feedback is information that returns to its original transmitter (input, transform or output) and modifies the transmitters actions.