1. The three key resources in management information systems (MIS) are information, information technology and people.
a. People are the most important resource out of the three. This is because people know how and when to apply technology and they know what information to use and how to use it. Also, people are able to make ethical and legal decisions that will benefit the business.
b. Although all three resources are important to a business, the least important in my opinion is information technology. This is because although in today’s day and age computers and computer based tools are frequently used, we have seen many businesses in the past succeed without the use of this type of technology.
2. There are four steps that an organization should follow in determining which technologies to use and they are as follows. First an organization must understand who and what their competition is within the market so they can react and adjust to anything that affects them. Second, they must decide what business strategies to use in order to address the competition and market pressures. Third, they need to choose the most important business strategy so they are able to implement the best technologies and lead their organization to success. Lastly and organization must be able to successfully pick out the right technology tools to use with their business strategies.
3. EBay is able to reduce the threat of new entrants because they have been the market leaders in this field for so long so they are able to offer a lot more than any competitors. They offer increased security for their customers when they are purchasing which can be viewed as an entry barrier because people will be less interested in buying from a site with less or no security. They also offer the most credible sellers and therefore the highest amount of product for their customers. PayPal is a huge part of eBay as it allows buyers to pay in any way that they choose in the most secure way and it provides the buyers a lot of ways to protect themselves for if there were ever to be a disagreement between themselves and the seller.
4. Porter’s three generic strategies (overall cost leadership, differentiation, focus), the top-line versus bottom-line approach and the RGT (run, grow, transform) framework are similar in many ways. In the RGT framework, run means to optimize what activities are already present which is similar to the overall cost leadership of Porter’s strategy as well as representing the bottom-line. The grow step is there to increase the business processes so that they are able to expand into different markets, which is comparable to Porter’s idea of focus because it emphasizes the importance of offering products and services to particular groups of consumers, which is similar to the top-line. The transform step is similar to differentiation as they are both trying to offer a product that is perceived as original or seen in a new light, which is also part of the top-line approach.
5. I think that the three most important parts of the value chain for a school are firm infrastructure, operations and technology development. This is because it is an organization and therefore need to have a strong infrastructure so that it runs smoothly year after year. Operations must also play a strong part because the school wants to process the students from what they come in as (raw materials) into successful people with a useful education (finished products). Technology development is also important because the school needs to move with the technology that is in the market so that the students are studying relevant information with the most recent type of resources.
Questions – Part 2 (Chapter 2)
6. Supply chain management (SCM) fits into Porter’s three generic strategies in the overall cost leadership strategy because SCM is largely focused on finding ways to save costs within