1. Strategic Initiatives for Implementing Competitive Advantage Great products—Innovative products Doesn’t matter---Bad processes—no perceived value 1) You want customers to 2) You have at a price customers are willing to

2. Using IT to gain a competitive advantage Businesses use IT to give themselves a – Customers than the How can we ? Is there a? – Businesses have to understand Find Remove Recognize smooth running processes

3. Business Processes Drive IT choices Business strategies and goals – Figure out business —then select IT to get the job done Managers often find themselves in the difficult position of changing a business process because the system can’t support the ideal solution. Typically When considering change, alternative business processes should be: – 1) Effective: – 2) Efficient: for the intended value. – 3) Adaptable/flexible and Technology and market forces constantly change

4. Changes to Improve Business Processes Automation: Operational process – Manual tasks become Streamlining: Managerial process –S–S – Eand/or redundancies – Eliminate bottlenecks Reengineer business processes: strategic process change – Find a – Flat world has more competition than ever before as there are more companies and customers in the global marketplace. – Focus on core processes that are rather than on margin processes that have little impact

5. Finding Opportunity Using Business Process Improvement A company can improve the way it travels the road by moving from foot to horse and then horse to car – Follow the same path as before, but just do it faster Business Process Improvement looks at taking a, such as an airplane which ignore the road completely

6. Businesses can also improve their competitiveness by changing what they do Focusing on – Putting together all of the pieces so that you can better understand your business, the environment that it operates in, and the factors that influence it. – Set of methodologies, processes, architectures and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful information (business intelligence) to enable more effective decision making and better insights into the business (strategical, tactical and operational). – Goal: to Moving to the “cloud” may also help improve an organization’s ability to be competitive.