IS/IT as a competitive advantage In order to be successful, a business must have

Question

IS/IT as a competitive advantage In order to be successful, a business must have a clear vision, one that focuses investments in resources such as information systems and technologies to help achieve a competitive advantage. Some sources of competitive advantage include the following.

Being the first to enter a market using IT/IS:

Amazon.com was the first major online bookstore. Experienced book retailers Barnes & Noble quickly adapted to develop their own Web sites. Amazon maintained their first-mover advantage. As an early entrant to the market, Amazon can lead other companies in their innovative use of technology in ways that other followers cannot easily enter the market. The early entrant learns how to reduce the costs of producing a product through accumulated experience in producing it. Having the best-made product on the market by utilizing IS/IT: Apple has kept in producing multiple iPad generations to the market and maintained its dominance in the tablet market despite tremendous competitive pressures. Apple continuously maintained the product quality despite of competitors’ price strategy.

Apple differentiates itself from competitors by providing exclusive services like FaceTime and iCloud. iPad’s hardware itself makes most profitable revenue and the additional content revenue is just add-on revenue. Apple has invested in research and development to ensure that the iPad outperforms other tablets. (adapted from http://blog.openviewpartners.com/tag/apple-marketing-strategy/) *

Note that IT/IS are the driving force in applying these two strategies above examples. Now, discuss the following sources (strategies) of competitive advantages by using some examples like I showed above. Using IT/IS, achieve lower costs than rivals

Explanation / Answer

Competitive advantage is so highly recommended in the field of strategic management due to following reasons:

The price and quality plays a major role for the company to increase its competitive advantage in the market, the management would be able to increase its sustainability in the market to be a market leader.
The product differentiation of strategic planning would increase on the profit of the company, as where the customers would always expect unique product and services, so that increase on the competitive advantage on which company could satisfy on the needs and expectations of the customers.
The employees play a major role for the growth of the business with improvement on their innovation and technology, as where their competitive advantage benefits the management towards increasing the profit.
The brand had a strategic management needs to be competitive in the market, so that the customers should be attracted towards the brand image and value, as to promote on the company in the market.
Enterprise resource planning solution (ERP) is the product. In order to have competitive advantage I would follow the below strategies:

Rare: ERP solution being large in number in the market need to be unique and rare in nature to succeed. Usually the ERP solutions are used for running a business hassle free by having a systemized approach in place. For Eg, SAP ERP solution, Oracle ERP solution and many more in the market. In my product I would add features like upcoming artificial intelligence and predictive analysis to differentiate it and to be a rare product from others.

Durable: Within my product I would give the durability with the upcoming cloud systems in use. Cloud system would give the flexibility to the consumer to be what specifically they would require and not to buy the complete package. For Eg, A company may purchase only Human Resource management system or Supply chain management system etc.

Non Substitutable: ERP solution being large in number is easily substitutable, but in order to make it un-substitutable I would look into emphasizing on the quality and at an affordable price.

Valuable: I would look at fixing the best price by doing cost analysis, competitive prices and then fix the value worth the product.

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