Electronic Business and ICT for Competitive Advantage.

Authors Avatar
Electronic Business and ICT for Competitive Advantage

Introduction

The idea that information can be used to give an organisation an advantage over its competitors is according to the Porter's generic strategy: differentiation, cost leadership and focus, the utilisation of information technology can give the organisation on the terms of: reducing the cost, such as the new process with lower cost, improving quality relative to costs, reducing distribution costs and after-sales cost, and the linkages in the value chain; differentiating from the other competitors make the organisation improve product quality, packaging, distribution and after-sales service; more focusing on the low cost and quality (David Wainwright, 2003). Information within an organisation may be seen the 'superset' which information system and technology are used to support. To some degree, gaining the competitive advantage depends on the use of information system, herein the researcher refers to E business and ICT.

In the case study, the researcher will analysis the E business and ICT of Proctor & Gamble corporation.

Literature

E-Business and ICT are the transformation of key business processes through the use of information technologies, which support internet as E business, or in other word, they help the organisation do what it do better, faster, easier and with greater benefits for its customers (http://home.ust.hk/~westland/p&g_note.htm), covering a range of technologies---computers, communications, audio, and video (Mike Powell, 1999), they also are the fundamental to business strategy and process execution; any more, they help to fully change the core competence of an organisation and exploit its weakness (Martin V. Deise, Conrad Nowikow, Patrick King, Amy Wright, 2000) .

E business and ICT merge the long reach and rich information delivery of the Internet and information with the organisation's selected core business processes to give it real business value. Streamlining the processes to gain efficiencies what the organisation can then pass back to its external and internal customers as a value that gives it serious competitive advantage.

They are not about reinventing the business, it's about identifying which of the organisation's core processes would give the most benefit from the huge potential of information technology. The focus here is on business process. The impact of E business and ICT are about managing customer relationships, integrating supply chain more effectively, enabling customers to buy online, etc, these solution will let the organisation pilot and prove E business and ICT as the basis for future growth.

With the Internet and information as an enabling technology, they change the way conducting business and allowing new working structure to develop among customers, suppliers and employers. It is important to the process change, especially on the channel enhancement and value chain integration (Martin V. Deise, Conrad Nowikow, Patrick King, Amy Wright, 2000). It is of importance to the value chain with the technology, e.g. EDI, EPOS, networking and open systems, CAD/CAM, accounting/personnel/stock control, telecommunications and mobile devices (David Wainwright, 2003). It enables company to take advantage of a host of new opportunities by allowing access to broader markets, increasing the speed of transactions and improve the relationship with the customer.

On the other hand, the IT strategy of using E business and ICT support and drive the corporate strategy, from the strategic to operational activity. There is a strategic model in which all the elements of corporate and information system strategy are aligned: (Steve Clarke, 2001)

Information need

The E business and ICT are functional strategy that responds to the chosen business strategy. The key objectives to emerge from this are a need to:

·Align information strategy with the organisation's overall strategic mission.

The organisation should adapt the sub strategy to its vision and mission, which will give an positive influence to determine the development of IS strategy.

·Enable planning and monitoring of ICT.

The investment on IS is costly to an organisation, so the planning, budgeting and forecasting is very important.

·Identify the resources necessary to deliver the strategy.

The IS strategy is the process of coordination and configuration of all kinds of resource, which is across the whole organisation. How to fully utilize the resource externally and internally is the key issue to an organisation.

The researcher will use the value chain to state the above theory and give a more explanation in the following case study.

To be more in detail, E-business and ICT can link the organisation to customers and suppliers, this utilisation creates effective integration of the use of information in value-adding process. It enables the organisation to develop, produce, market and deliver new products or service based upon information. Internally, this technology gives senior management information to help develop and implement strategy (Wendy Robson, 1997).
Join now!


For an organisation, it is e-nabled through E business and ICT, which improve the relationship management, revenue enhancement and cost reduction (Martin V. Deise, Conrad Nowikow, Patrick King, Amy Wright, 2000), also as the activities to add value. Integrating the value chain fully is the most important function of E business and ICT, the organisation can provide internal and external customer a higher level of service, which confers a true competitive advantage. On the other hand, enabling the supply chain with E business and ICT has helped organisation achieve 20 percent or better reduction in supply chain cost ...

This is a preview of the whole essay