Chapter 2 - Organizational Strategy, Competitive Advantage, and Information Systems

Question 1

Competitive Advantage

Answer 1

Any asset that provides and organization a leg up against its competitors in any measure such as cost, quality, speed.

Question 2

What is a business process?

Answer 2

An ongoing collection of related activities used in creating a good or providing a service

Question 3

What are the three fundemental elements of a business process?

Answer 3

Inputs
Resources
Outputs

Question 4

What vital role do IS systems play in cross functional business processes

Answer 4

• Executing the process
• Capturing and storing process data
• Monitoring process performance

Question 5

How do we measure business processes?

Answer 5

• Customer satisfaction
• Cost reduction
• Cycle and fulfillment time reducation
• Quality
• Differentiation
• Productivity

Question 6

What is business process reingineering ? (BPR)

Answer 6

A strategy for making an organizations business activities more profitable and efficient

Question 7

What is business process improvements? (BPI)

Answer 7

Reducing variantion in final product or service by finding the root cause of the variation in the process itself. Investigation is required.

Question 8

What are the five basic phases in a BPI project with organizations? HINT: DMAIC

Answer 8

• Define
• Measure
• Analyze
• Improve
• Control

Question 9

What is business activity monitoring? (BAM)

Answer 9

A real time approach for meausuring and managing business processes

Question 10

What is a business environment?

Answer 10

A combination of
-social
-legal
-economic 
-physical
-political factors 
where a busines conducts its operations

Question 11

How are market pressures generated?

Answer 11

• Global economy
• intense competition
• changing nature of the workforce
• powerful customers

Question 12

What are the pressures driving technology in a business?

Answer 12

• Techn innovation

- INformation overload

Question 13

What are the pressures driving social issues?

Answer 13

• Social Responsiblity
• Government regulation, spending for social programs, –spending to protect againt terrorism
• Ethics

Question 14

How do organizations responsd to various pressures?

Answer 14

• Using strategic systems
• Customer focus
• Make to order
• Mass communication
• e-business

Question 15

What is a cometitive strategy

Answer 15

A statement that identifies a business’s approach to compete its goals and the plans and policies that will be required to carry out those goals