IT and Competitive Strategy

IT and Competitive Strategy

Introduction

This century is the century of challenges and competition. Business firms are facing challenges every other day due to the advancement of technology and rapid growth in each field. There is also frequent and uncertain changing in organizations due to sweeping changes (DeNisi, Hitt and Jackson, 2003). It is essential to achieve a competitive advantage for senior managers in the competitive and slow growth markets. It also characterizes much business today and references of competitive advantage are the main issue for the scholars over last two decades (Henderson, 1983; Porter, 1985; Coyne, 1986; Prahalad and Hamel, 1990; Barney, 1991; Grant, 1991; Peteraf, 1993).

Discussion

The competitive advantage leads the success and growth of business organizations in the market. Most firms should know that it is the thorny issue to achieve competitive advantage in 21st Century. This is the main concern which lead to the development of knowledge based theories which enables to see the relationship between core resources and capabilities. A firm can have the certain competitive advantage if it is implementing the strategy which is not implemented by any other organization at a similar time (Barney, 1991).

There are numerous advantages associated with Enterprise Resource Planning, CRM and Distributed Network Systems. It has been using to solve number of problems and helped organizations to retail their reputations in the market in past.

ERP

There are many processes that a company needs to start their processes. One process related to engineering is the design engineering. ERP helps companies to find best possible designs. It is also useful in tracking purpose. When an organization receives order of product it needs detailed information related to that product such as marketing strategies and customer needs. If there are different software packages, then data is not consistent.

The most important aspect of Electronic Resource Planning is the accounting applications. It can help to integrate the costs, profit and revenue information regarding sales. It also shows how the product is manufactured. There are different setups which tell about the update of the services. It is essential, as it allows company to track their positions. It can also secure company from the industrial espionage.

There are also certain disadvantages associated with ERP. The biggest disadvantage related with this technology is the cost. Only large organizations can take advantage of this technology.

Companies are facing trouble in implementing this technology, as it also gets some limitations.

According to the survey, IT companies complained that there existed a huge amount of data there were problems in generating information, to act on it. When there is too much information available there are chances that data may not be reliable and accurate. These factors are hinders in making firm decisions in organizations. Information is also not adequately prioritized, reported by 55% of executives.

According to the survey two- thirds executives believe that knowledge management and technology tools may be key factors for companies to boom over next three years. Firms are always looking for IT tools for their employees, to ...