The Information Systems
Strategy Triangle
Dr. David Green

1-1

The Role of the
General Manager
• A key decisions maker.
• Not necessary to have a deep technical knowledge of there is.
• Aggressively seek to understand the consequences of using technologies relevant to the business’s environment. • Ask questions when it’s not clear.
• Should not leave IS decisions solely to the IS professionals 1-2

IS Strategy Triangle

1-44

Questions for the General Manager
• What is a business strategy?
• Which factors influences a business strategy? • How does a business change its strategy without losing balance or becoming out of alignment? • Are there specific events that induce a business to change its strategies? What are they? 1-6

Other Topics
• Dynamic Environment Strategies
• Organizational Strategies
• Information Systems Strategies

1-7

Questions?
Please post questions in the discussion forum regarding the reading and lecture.

1-88

Mission statements of computer companies
Compan Mission Statement y Zappos®

To provide the best customer service possible. Internally we call this our WOW Philosophy

Amazon®

We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for three primary customer sets: consumer customers, seller customers and developer customers

L.L.
Bean®

Sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings and they will always come back for more

1-9

Porter’s Generic Strategies
Framework
Three strategies for achieving competitive advantage.

1-11

Porter’s Competitive
Advantage
• Remember that a companies overall business strategy will drive all other strategies
• Porter defined these competitive advantages to represent various business strategies found in the marketplace • Cost leadership results when the organization aims to be the lowest-cost producer in the marketplace
• Through differentiation, the organization qualifies its product or service in a way that allows it to appear unique in the marketplace

1-12

Porter’s Competitive
Advantage (Cont.)
• Focus allows an organization to limit its scope to a narrower segment of the market and tailor its offerings to that group of customers
– This strategy has two variants:
1. Cost focus
2. differentiation focus

1-13

Dynamic Environment
Strategies
• Porter’s model is useful for diagnostics, or understanding how a business seeks to profit in its chosen marketplace, and for prescriptions, or building new opportunities for advantage
• Porter model was developed at a time where the rate of change in any given industry was relatively slow and manageable
• Newer models were developed to take into account the increasing turbulence and velocity of the marketplace
1-14

Hypercompetition
Model
• Porter’s model focus on creating competitive advantage, whereas hypercompetition models suggest that the speed and aggressiveness of the moves and countermoves in any given market create an environment in which advantages are rapidly created and eroded
• hypercompetition models
– Fits turbulent environments
– Enables managers respond instantly and change rapidly
– Requires dynamic structures and processes
1-15

Rapidly Changing
Environment and
Marketplace
• Firms focus on their capability to dynamically adjust their organizational resources, valuing agility itself as the competitive advantage
• Still focus on customer satisfaction, profit maximization, and other goals consistent with the business’s values and beliefs
• Utilize components of business intelligence:
– The ability to predict new opportunities, organizational designs that can sense, restructure, and respond quickly
– Strategic signaling and actions that both surprise and confuse competitors
1-16

Accelerated Competition
• Since the 1990s, competition led to wider gaps between industry leaders and laggards
– “winner-take-all” environments
– Greater churn among sector rivals

• Joseph Schumpeter predicted the “creative destruction” over 60 years ago
• Sharp increases in the