Acquiring competitive advantage for every organization is necessary and it is one of the primary goals for any business in terms of enhancing organizational performance. Attainment of competitive advantage leads the organization to stand on leading position. This also helps the company to establish its unique image in the target market along with differentiating it from its competitors.
This report will cover certain crucial aspects of attaining competitive advantage and with regards to this; Enterprise System’s application will be discussed. Enterprise system is one of an effective contribution of technology which helps the company to move towards automation along with executing the functionalities in an effective and efficient manner. Apart from this, Enterprise System is considered as the primary factor through which competitive advantage could be attained easily. Enterprise System is package of software which helps the business to execute its functionalities in a flow along with managing proper functioning of value chain activities of organization. Apart from this, enterprise resource planning system also helps the business entities to manage customer relationship management. In relation to this, two company’s example will be discussed who have attained competitive advantage using enterprise system (Sykes, Venkatesh & Johnson, 2014).
Core objective of an enterprise system is to enhance organizational performance, reduce chances of glitch from the functionalities of organisation, overall development and sustained growth. With regards to this, organization adopts enterprise system so that cost of production could be minimised along with minimising waste management. This ultimately enhances profitability for organization through which desired goals and objectives could easily be attained. This report will discuss the concept of competitive advantage in relation with Woolworths and Apple Inc. Both these companies are using Enterprise System for smooth functioning of their value chain activities for attainment of competitive advantage. It has been evaluated that application of enterprise system not only enhances organizational performance and enhances productivity but also helps in terms of development effective brand image in the domestic as well as in international market (Sharma & Sykes, 2018).
Competitive advantage is a big achievement for an organization and gaining competitive advantage proves that the particular organization is effective as well as efficient from other companies in the same market. For example, Amazon Inc. is leading the whole e-commerce market in the global market in terms of market capitalisation and revenues. Major reason behind this is their customer centric approach and huge product offering with adequate quality. This has helped the organization acquire huge customer base in the global market. Thus, when consumer plans to buy something through online mediums, they prefer to get it from Amazon due to their effective services. Woolworths Supermarkets is an Australian grocery supermarket chain store operates under Woolworths Limited. It was founded in 1924. Company is one of the biggest grocery stores and supermarket chain in the Australian market and along with Coles, which is another big supermarket chain in Australia has covered approximately 80% market share of the Australian market (Alles, et. al., 2018). Woolworths’ major product offering include grocery items, magazines, DVDs, health & beauty products, household, stationary items, etc. With more than 1000 stores across the globe, organization has also acquired an effective market share in the global market. Company is operating in the retail industry since a very long time and in order to maintain their acquired position in the target market, organization uses to implement strategies as per the market conditions as well as on the basis of their target audience’s demands and wants. Apart from this, organization has also adopted enterprise system with the objective of improving its value chain activities through which organization has been able to enhance organizational performance by enhancing quality and efficiency of their products and services. It has been noticed that after implementation of enterprise system by Woolworths Limited in their supermarkets’ chain, efficiency has been increased as all tasks are being performed through automation process which has enhanced productivity along with minimising the chances of glitches in the functionalities. Enterprise system has also helped the organization to match up with the international standards along with developing an effective communication system at workplace. Primary advantages of using automation process are decrease chances of errors, enhance organizational efficiency, generate efficient outcomes and keep record for every activity which is performed at the workplace. Apart from this, automation processes has helped the Woolworths Limited to implement an effective communication system at workplace through which top level management could easily communicate with its employees and organizational mission, vision and objectives are easily communicated to the employees. Along with this, employees could also get in touch with the top level management without any facing any barrier (Jones, Vidalis & Abouzakhar, 2016).
Enterprise system has also helped the Woolworths Limited to communicate with its clients in an efficient manner and as the organization has mainly implemented enterprise system in the value chain activities. With regards to this, suppliers automatically receive order on behalf of the organization when organization left with less quantity of the particular item. Along with this, organization has also implemented several other systems through which quality of the products could be measured in relation with the benchmarks set up by the top level management. Enterprise system has also provided sufficient resources to the organization through which employees could think out of the box in order to generate innovative and creative ideas for the objective of enhancing organizational performance along with gaining competitive advantage (Khorshed, et. al., 2015).
Following are three approaches which have been adopted by Woolworths Limited along with the implementation of enterprise system:
Motive of differentiation strategy is to differentiate organizational products and services from its competitors. This strategy has been adopted by Woolworths Limited to make its unique image in the global retail and supermarket industry (Lee, et. al., 2013).
With the adaptation of differentiation strategy, Woolworths has built its effective and unique image in the target market. This strategy has helped the organization to gain competitive advantage. Enterprise system has been adopted and implemented with the objective of enhancing the organizational performance and with regards to this; product differentiation strategy has been adopted so that organization could create value in its products. Thus, it has helped the organization to distinguish its products and services from the competitors which has ultimately enhanced demand for the organizational products in the target market. In today’s competitive business environment, it is necessary for the organization to adopt unique and advanced measures to generate positive outcomes as this has become the primary objective for every organization with regards to the attainment of competitive advantage. Organization has acquired large part of the market share in the Australian market which has taken the organization towards leading position in the supermarket industry. In relation with differentiating products and services from competitors’, Woolworths has invested a big part of their earnings in R&D department for developing unique image in the target market (Lin, et. al., 2016).
Apple Inc. is a smartphone manufacturing firm and in the worldwide market, company is known for producing premium segment smartphones. Company always believes in innovation and creativity for making their products unique and different from its competitors. In addition to this, Apple Inc. has also adopted product differentiation strategy so that they could stay one step ahead from its competitors along with differentiating its customer segments from the whole target market. In relation with the product differentiation strategy, organization use to conduct market research analysis so that market conditions, target customer’s preferences, demand and wants could be determined (Themistocleous, Corbitt & da Cunha, 2017). This helps the organization to produce customer oriented products in the premium segment category through which organization easily attain its set goals and objectives. Although, competition in smartphone industry is highly intensive and every company is trying to be unique by implementing new and unique features in their products. Thus, Apple Inc. has adopted enterprise system as an alternative or as supporting strategy for enhancing organizational performance along with gaining competitive advantage (Suri, 2016).
This strategy is linked with the objective of developing or setting up an effective brand image amongst the target audience. This is done by adopting unique and creative marketing strategies along with highlighting the unique features and USPs of particular product and services. In relation with the enterprise system, top management requires to plan its value chain activities so that competitive advantage could be gained along with developing an effective brand image in the target market.
Due to intensive industry rivalry in the supermarket industry, every rival of Woolworths Limited is adopting unique measures for developing unique brand image in the target market. With regards to this, Woolworths Limited has adopted enterprise system through which they could easily be able to highlight creative and unique factors of their products. Along with this, enterprise system is effective enough to gain appropriate and relevant information regarding the target market, consumer’s data, etc. with the help of cyber computing and this system ultimately helps the organization to gain competitive advantage by providing customer oriented products. Apart from this, it is the duty of top level management of the organization to refine the collected data for acquiring positive outcomes along with competitive advantage (Ram, Wu & Tagg, 2014).
With the help of this strategy, organization has built its effective as well as unique image amongst the target customer’s mind-set. In relation with the adopted enterprise system, organization has adopted positioning strategy so that positive outcomes could be acquired. Enterprise system has also helped the organization to implement customisation approach to attract target audience.
In relation with the customisation approach, Apple provides an artificial assistance as Siri and it is able to take orders from its owners along with implementing them in an appropriate and effective manner. Siri is being upgraded time to time in relation with helping customers to generate positive outcomes (Yildiran, Kilic & Sennaroglu, 2018).
This strategy helps organizations to enhance their performances and with relevance to this, organizations invest in R&D department so that creative and innovative measures in consideration to the past failures of the organization. This motivates organizations to implement new strategy and approaches so that success could be attained in the future which could ultimately help organizations to attain competitive advantage (Handoko, Aryanto & So, 2015).
Strategy adopted by Woolworths (Supermarket)
With the help of enterprise system in value chain activities, Woolworths could easily analyse the primary reasons for their past failures. Apart from this, every failure comes with a learning which is considered by the management for developing future strategies. Thus, consistent learning is an essential strategy for the objective of enhancing organizational performance along with gaining competitive advantage (Al-Mashari & Al-Mosheleh, 2015).
Strategy adopted by Apple Inc. (IT)
Enterprise system adopted by Apple Inc. helps to perform intellectual functions in an appropriate manner. This ultimately boosts up organizational performance as tasks could easily be performed along with generating positive outcomes. With the help of consistent learning, Apple Inc. does not try to implement innovative and creative strategies every time. Rather adopting new and innovative strategies, organization uses to add new and creative features in their subsequent products to grab target audiences’ attention. Thus, this helps the organization to boost up the demand for their products and services in order to gain competitive advantage in the domestic as well as in international market (Cook, 2017).
Conclusion
From the aforesaid information, it can be concluded that enterprise system is an essential aspect for boosting up the organizational performance as it has the capability to perform organizational tasks in more appropriate manner along with the objective of gaining positive outcomes. This report concluded that implementation of enterprise system as the primary tool for gaining competitive advantage. In relation with this, differentiation strategy, positioning strategy and consistent learning strategy has been discussed with regards to the functionalities of Woolworths and Apple Inc. It has been evaluated that with the implementation of these strategies, organization could easily enhance their performance at domestic as well as at international level.
References
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Al-Mashari, M. and Al-Mosheleh, H., 2015. Enterprise Resource Planning of Business Process Systems. In UKAIS(p. 2).
Cook, N., 2017. Enterprise 2.0: How social software will change the future of work. Routledge.
Handoko, B.L., Aryanto, R. and So, I.G., 2015. The impact of enterprise resources system and supply chain practices on competitive advantage and firm performance: Case of Indonesian companies. Procedia Computer Science, 72, pp.122-128.
Jones, A., Vidalis, S. and Abouzakhar, N., 2016. Information security and digital forensics in the world of cyber physical systems. In Digital Information Management (ICDIM), 2016 Eleventh International Conference on (pp. 10-14). IEEE.
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