MIS Assignment 3

Q 1: Chapter 3

a. Porter’s competitive forces model

External environmental forces have an inevitable role in the shaping the strategies and

decisions of the organizations. These forces are also affecting the company’s competitive position

and profitability in the industry. The best way of getting information about the effect of these

external environmental forces upon the business is the Porter’s 5 Forces model. These forces

included the bargaining power of buyer, bargaining power of supplier, the threat of new entrant,

substitute of the product, and rivalry among the competitors. The analysis of these forces is

essential for the clearance of overall attractiveness of market and performance that accepted from

the information and technology market. The model explains the hidden truth behind sustaining the

level of profitability of different industries. It is powerful yet a simple tool for getting insight into

the competitiveness of a business environment and also for the identification of potential

profitability of a business strategy.

b. Importance of aligning IT with business strategies

The fundamental principle of aligning IT strategy for the business is to ensure that

technology serves the business, not anything else. A company that succeeded to align its IT

strategy with its business successfully will be more profitable. A failure in aligning the IT strategy

with the business goals will lead towards the lower level of profitability. IT system also helps the

business to deal with the competitive forces successfully.

c. Internet role in changing competitive forces and competitive advantage.

much more intense competitive rivalry. The Internet is a technology that based upon the universal

standards that are same for any company exists in the market. The Internet makes it easy for the

existing rivals to compete on the better prices. Due to the internet profit of business also suffer. It

is the internet that also destroyed many industries. Now every kind of information can easily

access via the internet. It contributes to raising the bargaining power of buyers. These buyers can

easily find a low-cost alternative from the website.

At the same time, the internet has created a new market for the number of business. Many

new product and services have introduced, and these lead to creating new opportunities for the

company. It is the internet that also contributes to the development of many industries.

Q 2: Case Study: “Carter’s Redesigns Its Business Processes

a. How did Carter’s previous business processes affect its business performance?

A business transaction is mandatory activities in the business processes, and in Carter’s

case, it was vigorously manual. That is why handling time of a transaction was higher and painful.

At the same time, the threat of having manual errors in the transaction was higher as compared

working with the technology. The manual measurement of business process metrics also takes a

significant amount of time both at recording the handling time or asking the employee about it.

The limited capacity or bottleneck in a single chain process influenced the performance of the

whole chain and finally business.

b. Describe the role of technology in Carter’s business process changes.

The use of ERP system in the business helps the Carter to modernize its business

processes. Implementing 4 SAP HANA business suit project bring ease to Carter’s business
 transaction process. SAP helps the Carter to communicate the project with the audit committee

and also quickly identify the risk that involves in a new project.

c. How did Carter’s redesigned business processes change the way the company worked? Explain.

With the implementation of SAP in the business transaction system has become

centralized instead of decentralized manual transactions. It enables the customers as well as

employees. All the transnational process from invoice creation to data analysis or retrieving

becomes swifter as compared to a manual system. It also reduces the threat of human error in the

transaction business processes.

Q 3: Video Case

Video Case 1: GE Becomes a Digital Firm: The Emerging Industrial Internet

Case Questions:

1. What does Immelt mean by the “digitization of the industrial world” and “the industrial

Internet?” What are the four central elements of the industrial Internet?

Immelt felt that the manufacturing technologies and techniques that are under the use of

GE should include digital technologies as well as the internet. Immelt pays more attention upon

building industrial software that could help the GE to manage it’s all industrial manufacturing

business. Industrial internet is sensors that produced data; cloud computing is for collecting data,

analytics software for the data processing and sold to these results to business customers as

service.

The four central elements are included

1. Sensing that can be biological, visual, biometric, environmental or audible

level of the device to a cloud-based service for the processing subsequently.

3. Information delivery

4. Cloud-based capture and consolidation

2. What were the three alternatives GE had for developing the hardware and software capabilities

to become a digital firm?

The three alternatives that GE can consider are

1. Acquiring companies with expertise

2. Building in-house capabilities with its employees

3. Project outsourcing to other firms

3. Which option for developing its digital capabilities did GE choose and why?

GE has chosen developing new in-house digital capabilities for the sake of capturing full

value in a digital firm same like other companies. In case of paying no attention to the building of

GE own digital capabilities, it will lose its future revenue.

4. Why does the new GE want to treat analytics as company expertise just as it has always treated

material science?

It is because the real value of a digital firm lies in developing insight into the digital data

and selling it to the industrial clients. That is not just merely data in understanding what does it

means and how it helps its customers in the improvement of their business.

5. What example does Immelt use to illustrate the value of digital knowledge to GE customers?
 Train companies operate locomotives, and its average speed in the USA is 22 miles/hour.

If with the help of better data collection as well as with the analysis, its speed got increase up to

23 miles/hour. Then a train company can able to earn $250 million additional in profit per year.

6. What does Immelt mean when he says GE will become a “platform” and “app” company?

Predix is a cloud computing platform that is open to the customers for the data collection

and analysis upon the industrial machines of GE. Predix is also a cloud base services for the

customers. Customers are capable enough to develop their apps for data analysis and some of the

app cab internally develop as well as sold to customers.

7. Why does Immelt believe GE will need to hire thousands of new people to achieve its goals of

becoming a digital firm?

Immelt believes That GE needs to hire new employees due to lack of skills in the existing

employees that requires for the GE to become a digital firm. GE needs to employ new managers

for the product development, data scientists and also new sales force. However, the old employees

of GE that are trained in manufacturing as well as material science still are in need of producing

industrial products.

8. What is the “culture of simplification” that Immelt believes is needed at GE?

The cultural simplification that Immelt believes required to be at GE is

1. Few layers in hierarchy, processes as well as in making decision points

2. Setting “swift work” or schedule along with everything on a defined clock

3. The movement towards the real-time environment and unplugging anything

annual

4. Democratizing information within the business