Information Technology for Strategic, Competitive Advantage: Technologies, Management and the Real World

1
Information Technology for Strategic, Competitive
Advantage Technologies, Management and the Real
World

• Virginia Franke Kleist, Ph.D.
• October 28, 2003
• Assistant Professor
• Division of MIS/Management

2
Welcome to the Technology Part of the Program

• Purpose of this class is to cover three aspects
  of information technology
• 1. TECHNOLOGIES Current and new trends in
  information technologies
• 2. MANAGEMENT How can IT be used for
  strategic, competitive advantage?
• 3. REAL WORLD Real world case of electronic
  commerce applications

3
What about your firm?

• How are you using information technology (IT)
  today in your firms and businesses?
• How successful has this been for your firm?
• Do you have problems that are still unresolved
  with Information Technology?
• Can IT give competitive advantage, anyway?
• How can one identify which technologies will best
  give strategic advantage?

4
Instructor Background

• Educational background
• Professional background
• Research focus
• Biometrics Industry Cost/Benefit
• Biometrics Industry Performance
• Metrics in Technology The ROI
• Electronic Markets
• Network Security infrastructures

5
What are the latest technologies of interest?

• TCP/IP and the Internet
• CPUs and hardware
• Software and the open source code movement
• Client/server computing
• Storage area networks
• Interactive multimedia
• Developments in Electronic Commerce
• Databases and Datamining
• Handhelds, M-commerce
• Knowledge Management tools and Artificial
  Intelligence

6
Technologies TCP/IP and the Internet

• Codes, bits and bytes
• Analog vs. Digital transmission
• Packet switching and circuit switching
• The IP address, TCP/IP layers
• Domain name resolution
• The world is becoming digital
• Physical vs. Logical connectivity

7
Technologies CPUs and Software

• Hardware components of a computer system
• Buses, CPUs, MHz, RAM, Gigs and cache
• Bits and Bytes, storage
• Moores Law and price points per MIPs
• Mainframes, RISC computers, Parallel processing
• Open source movement in operating systems
• Enterprise Resource Planning software
• Object oriented programming

8
Technologies Client Server Computing

• Distributed processing vs. centralized processing
• Network computing
• Servers
• Bridges and routers, gateways
• Network management
• Ethernet and Token Ring

9
Technologies Storage Area Networks

• Mirrors and provides redundancy
• Fibre channel connectivity
• EMC, Compaq, HP
• Fits with trend to pushing density of corporate
  data further out into the cloud network

10
Technologies Interactive Multimedia

• Groupware
• Voice over IP
• Streaming technology
• Flash, Maya, sophistication of Electronic
  Commerce pages
• MP3
• Peer to peer sharing of applications
• Seeing corporate uses in training applications

11
Technologies Electronic Commerce

• The client/server/database three tier model
• HTML, JavaScript
• XML vs. EDI
• ASP and ActiveX, PHP, CGI
• Ultradev, Flash, DW and development tools
• Security and encryption issues
• Intranets and Extranets

12
Technologies Databases, Datamining

• Data is the companys strategic asset (PWC)
• Data warehouses, multidimensional databases and
  data marts
• OLAP vs. OLTP processing
• Informix, Oracle and Red Brick
• The database management system

13
Technologies Handhelds and M- Commerce

• How does a cell phone work?
• WAP technology
• Palm and Visor
• The Win CE platform
• Linux in the small devices
• EPOC operating system
• What is M-commerce and what does it mean to me?

14
Technologies Knowledge Management Tools and
Artificial Intelligence

• Examples of Knowledge Management systems
• Expert systems the earthenware dam
• Neural Networks
• Fuzzy logic
• Intelligent agents

15
Management Information Systems Planning

• IS plan maps to the corporate strategic plan
• Variety of IS planning styles CSF, Enterprise,
  other formal structures
• Plan itself What are the components?
• Organizational change from systems TQM, BPR,
  paradigm shifts or simple automation?

16
Management the Systems Development Life Cycle

• Systems analysis
• Systems design
• Programming
• Testing
• Conversion
• Production mode and ongoing maintenance

17
Management Implementation

• The RFP document
• Financial issues for IS planning
• The payback concerns
• Programming the mythical man/month
• Construction issues
• testing and maintenance
• end users
• prototypes and pilots
• outsourcing

18
Management Security Issues

• System quality, reliability, accuracy
• Data security controls
• The firewall and internet issues (hackers,
  viruses, trojan horses, denial of service
  attacks)
• Encryption, DES, SSL, SET
• Biometrics

19
Strategic Advantage IT at work

• IT and changes in the organization of business
  flatter, leaner, teams, JIT, global
• Datamining and Walmart
• E-commerce and the supply chain at Dell
• M-commerce and Progressive Auto
• Internet and Egghead
• American Airlines, Baxter, Citibank

20
Strategic Advantage How does one come up with
this idea, anyway?(Laudon and Laudon, 2000)

• Porters Value Chain primary and support
  activities
• The competitive forces model Threats from new
  market entrants, suppliers, substitute products
  and customers
• Core competencies
• Network economics

21
Some Problems from IT for Competitive Advantage

• The productivity paradox
• Tangible vs. intangible benefits from IT
• Future cash flows analysis
• Unique vs. staying even with competition
• Value from simple automation projects
• Value from highly risky, but strategic IT
  projects
• Risk vs. return issues

22
How can your firm benefit from IT?

• In supply chain management through inventory
  management
• In the customer interface via ecommerce
• In logistics through GPS/GIS
• In client management through groupware
• In marketing through datamining
• In internal management through Intranets

23
Real World The Dell Case

• How did Dell achieve success?
• What IT technologies did Dell use?
• How does Dell use ecommerce successfully?
• What are the ways that Dell uses IT for
  strategic, competitive advantage?
• What is Dells business model?
• Will Dell be able to keep this success going,
  given the recent troubles?