Chapter 2 Strategic Uses of Information Systems Objectives
• Explain what business strategy and strategic
moves are • Illustrate how information systems can give businesses a competitive advantage • Identify basic initiatives for gaining a competitive advantage • Explain what makes an information system a strategic information system
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Objectives (continued)
• Identify fundamental requirements for
developing strategic information systems • Explain circumstances and initiatives that make one IT strategy succeed and another fail
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Strategy and Strategic Moves
• Strategy: framework, or approach, to obtaining
an advantageous position • Business strategy: a plan to help an organization outperform its competitors – Often done by creating new opportunities, not beating rivals • Information system may be built to solve a problem or to seize an opportunity
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Strategy and Strategic Moves (continued) • Strategic information system (SIS): an information system that helps seize opportunities • Strategic advantage: using strategy to maximize company strengths • Competitive advantage: having maximized an organization’s strengths to beat its rivals • Using the Web strategically can be advantageous – Simply extending business to the Web is no longer a strategic advantage
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Achieving a Competitive Advantage
• Competitive advantage is achieved when a for-
profit company increases its profits significantly, usually through increased market share • Many initiatives can be used to gain competitive advantage • Strategic moves often combine two or more initiatives • The essence of strategy is innovation
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Achieving a Competitive Advantage (continued)
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Achieving a Competitive Advantage (continued)
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Initiative #1: Reduce Costs
• Customers want to pay as little as possible for
products or services • Reduce costs to lower price • Automation greatly reduces manufacturing costs • Web can automate customer service activities • Companies that are first to adopt advanced systems that reduce labor enjoy competitive advantage until their rivals do likewise
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Initiative #2: Raise Barriers to Market Entrants • Less competition is better for company • Gain competitive advantage by making it difficult or impossible for others to produce the same product or service • To lower competition, raise barriers to entrants – Obtain legal protection of intellectual property (copyrights and patents on inventions, techniques, and services) – Examples: Amazon’s one-click, Priceline’s reverse auction
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Initiative #2: Raise Barriers to Market Entrants (continued) • Build unmatchable information systems – Rivals must do likewise or license your technology – Example: State Street Corp.’s pension fund management ISs
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Initiative #3: Establish High Switching Costs • Switching costs: expenses incurred when customer stops buying from one company and starts buying from another – Explicit: charge customer for switching (early termination of contract) – Implicit: indirect costs over period of time, such as implementation of new product, staff retraining • High switching costs lock in customers – Example: proprietary software, such as ERP systems, that have custom modifications
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Initiative #4: Create New Products or Services • Having a unique product or service gives competitive advantage for a period of time • First mover: organization that is first to offer a new product or service – Usually results in superior brand name, better technology, more experience, or critical mass • Critical mass: body of clients that is large enough to attract other clients • Examples: eBay, Apple’s iPhone
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Initiative #4: Create New Products or Services (continued)
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Initiative #4: Create New Products or Services (continued) • Being a first mover is not a guarantee of long- term success – Netscape – Infoseek • Must continue to improve and innovate to maintain competitive advantage
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Initiative #5: Differentiate Products or Services • Product differentiation: persuading customers that your product is better than competitors’ – Usually achieved through advertising and customer experience – Exemplified by brand name success – Promotes brand name • Example: Skype, YouTube
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Initiative #5: Differentiate Products or Services (continued)
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Initiative #5: Differentiate Products or Services (continued)
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Initiative #6: Enhance Products or Services • Enhance existing products or services to increase value to consumer • Many products and services have been enhanced by use of the Web – Examples: Charles Schwab, Progressive Groups
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Initiative #6: Enhance Products or Services (continued)
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Initiative #7: Establish Alliances
• Alliance: two companies combining services
– Makes product more attractive – Reduces costs – Provides one-stop shopping • Affiliate program: linking to other companies and rewarding the linker for click-throughs
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Initiative #7: Establish Alliances (continued)
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Initiative #8: Lock in Suppliers or Buyers • Accomplished by achieving bargaining power • Bargaining power: leverage to influence buyers and suppliers – Achieved by being major competitor or eliminating competitors – Uses purchase volume as leverage over suppliers • Lock in buyers by making them fear high switching costs
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Initiative #8: Lock in Suppliers or Buyers (continued) • Lock in clients by: – Giving away a product to make it become a standard (Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Adobe’s Acrobat Reader, Macromedia’s Flash player) – Creating a physical or software limitation on using technology (Apple Computer’s iTunes)
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Creating and Maintaining Strategic Information Systems • Many opportunities to accomplish competitive edge with information technology • Innovative software can establish a competitive advantage • Strategic information systems can be created from scratch or by modifying a previous system • To be an SIS, an information system must: – Serve an organization goal – Collaborate with other functional units of company
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Creating an SIS • Top management must be involved throughout the process • Strategic information system must be part of the overall organizational strategic plan • Management should ask questions to determine whether to develop a new SIS • Estimating the financial benefits of SIS is extremely difficult – Many fundamental business changes may be involved
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Creating an SIS (continued)
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Reengineering and Organizational Change • To implement SIS, organizations must rethink the way they operate • Reengineering: Eliminating and rebuilding operations from the ground up – Often involves new machinery and elimination of management layers – Frequently involves information technology – Goal is to achieve huge efficiency improvements • New SIS requires revamping business processes
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Competitive Advantage as a Moving Target • Competitive advantage is often short-lived • Competitors soon imitate the leader, diminishing the advantage • SIS quickly becomes a standard business practice • Must continually modify and enhance technology to sustain competitive advantage
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JetBlue: A Success Story
• JetBlue: airline company that entered a formerly
hurting market with great success – Ticketless travel – Automation with IT – Reduced costs – Improved service
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JetBlue: A Success Story (continued)
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Massive Automation
• JetBlue developed Open Skies software to
automate ticket handling – Avoids travel agents and their fees – Uses reservation agents who work from home using VoIP – Encourages Internet flight booking by customers • Maintenance information system used to log airplane parts and time cycles for replacement
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Massive Automation (continued)
• Flight planning to maximize occupied seats is
automated • Operational data is updated flight by flight and available to management at all times • Training management system eliminates need for paper records, allows tracking of employee training
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Away from Tradition
• JetBlue used innovative technique for routing
airplanes – Does not use hub-and-spokes method, only point to point – Take most profitable route between cities • Keeping flight manuals on laptop computers allows for paperless cockpits – Saves preflight time associated with calculating weight of plane (annual savings of ~4800 hours)
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Away from Tradition (continued)
• Uses biometrics for authentication and
authorization • Implemented a paperless frequent flier program
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Enhanced Service
• Technology helps JetBlue offer better service
– Leather seats – Real-time in-flight television – On-schedule departures and arrivals – Fewest mishandled bags in the industry – Rapid check-in times and fast baggage retrieval – Better security
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Impressive Performance
• Most important metric in airline industry is cost
per available seat-mile (CASM) – Measures how much it costs to fly a passenger one mile • JetBlue had lowest or second-lowest CASM for its first three years of operations – Less than 7 cents (industry average is 11 cents) • JetBlue fills 78% of its seats, while competitors fill only 71%
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Late Mover Advantage
• Late mover: enters the market later than other
competitors – Can be viewed as advantage – Implements latest available technologies – Not burdened with legacy systems • JetBlue used 40% beta software
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Ford on the Web: A Failure Story
• Some strategic moves end up being colossal
failures • May fail because of lack of attention to details • Unable to predict customer or business partner response • Ford’s great failed initiative was undertaken by Jacque Nasser, CEO of Ford
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The Ideas
• Nasser was eager to push Ford to the Web; his
ideas included: – Install devices in vehicles to enable drivers and passengers to access Web – Establish Web site to market parts to auto manufacturers via auctions to encourage price competition among parts suppliers – Push vehicle sales to Web and bypass dealers and their fees
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Hitting the Wall
• Customers not very interested in Web access in
vehicles in 2000 • Other car companies learned to use online part auctioning • State franchising laws did not allow car companies to bypass dealers – Online sales initiative failed
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The Retreat
• Ford abandoned plan to sell directly to
consumers online • Web site used to select proper model only, but consumers must still utilize a dealer • Web site sold cars, but not enough to save Nasser’s job
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The Bleeding Edge
• Ford case shows that being a first mover is risky
• Pioneers sometimes get burned even with careful planning • Bleeding edge: failure occurring because of company trying to be on leading edge – No prior experience from which to learn – Implementation costs are greater than anticipated – Technology ends up losing money for company
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The Bleeding Edge (continued)
• Due to bleeding edge, companies often wait
before implementing newer technologies • Microsoft’s approach is to seize an existing idea, improve it, and promote it with marketing power – Also known as competing by emulating and improving
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Summary • Some information systems have become strategic tools as a result of strategic planning; others have evolved into strategic tools • Strategic information systems help companies gain strategic advantage • Company achieves strategic advantage by using strategy to maximize its strength, resulting in a competitive advantage
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Summary (continued)
• Various initiatives for establishing strategic
advantage: – Cost reduction, raising barriers to competitors, establishing high switching costs, new products, differentiating products, enhancing products, alliances, and locking suppliers • Creating standards often establishes strategic advantage in software industry
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Summary (continued) • Reengineering: the process of redesigning a business process from scratch to significantly reduce costs • Strategic advances from information systems are short-lived; new opportunities must always be sought • Must keep systems on the leading edge to maintain strategic advantage • Bleeding edge is the undesirable result of a failed innovation effort