1.Explain information technology’s role in business and describe how you measure success?
Porter’s five forces model determines the relative attractiveness of an industry. It can help a company identify potential opportunities while determining potential rivals.
3. Compare Porter’s three generic strategies.
Once an organisation decides to enter an industry it must formulate a strategy for entring this market. An organisation can follow one of Porter’s three generic strategies, which are:
1) Broad cost leadership
2) Broad differentiation
3) Focused strategy
Competitive scope is a demand-side dimension and looks at the size and composition of the market you intend to target. Cost strategy is a supply-side dimension and looks at the strength or core competency of the firm. In particular he identified two competencies that he felt were most important: product differentiation and product cost.
4. Describe the relationship between business processes and value chains.
A business process is a standardised set of activities that accomplish a specific task. A business uses the value chain approach to evaluate the effectiveness of its business process. By performing certain activities in the value chain a business creates value. The value chain approach views an organisation as a series of processes, each of which adds value to the product or service for the customer. Value creation is the result of effective business processes and efficient value chains.
No matter the purpose whether for efficiency or effectiveness there has to be benchmarks, baseline values the system seeks to attain, set. The third system to measure an It departments success is benchmarking which is the process of continuously measuring results, comparing results and identifying improvements.
Information technology plays mainly a support role in business. The information technology department of a business’ role is to align itself with the strategic direction of the business and to support the business process.
The success of an IT department can be measured using a number of methods. The first is efficiency IT metrics which measure the performance of the IT system itself, such as throughput, speed and availability. The second is effectiveness IT metrics which measure the impact IT has on business processes and activities including customer satisfaction, conversion rates and sell-through increases.
2. List and describe each of the forces in Porter’s Five Forces Model.
3. Compare Porter’s three generic strategies.
Once an organisation decides to enter an industry it must formulate a strategy for entring this market. An organisation can follow one of Porter’s three generic strategies, which are:
1) Broad cost leadership
2) Broad differentiation
3) Focused strategy
Competitive scope is a demand-side dimension and looks at the size and composition of the market you intend to target. Cost strategy is a supply-side dimension and looks at the strength or core competency of the firm. In particular he identified two competencies that he felt were most important: product differentiation and product cost.
4. Describe the relationship between business processes and value chains.
A business process is a standardised set of activities that accomplish a specific task. A business uses the value chain approach to evaluate the effectiveness of its business process. By performing certain activities in the value chain a business creates value. The value chain approach views an organisation as a series of processes, each of which adds value to the product or service for the customer. Value creation is the result of effective business processes and efficient value chains.
No matter the purpose whether for efficiency or effectiveness there has to be benchmarks, baseline values the system seeks to attain, set. The third system to measure an It departments success is benchmarking which is the process of continuously measuring results, comparing results and identifying improvements.
All information sourced from:
- Baltzan, P., Phillips, A., Lynch, K., & Blakey, P. (2010). Business Driven Information Systems. Sydney: McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd.
- Lecture Slides
- Lecture Slides
