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.