Business strategy or business management is the formulation, evaluation and implementations of several cross functional decisions, which will be enabling a particular organization for attaining the overall organizational goals and objectives (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). In simple words, a business strategy is the plan for leadership, which is made for achieving a distinct set of objectives and goals. The probable and the significant objectives or goals of an organization include the development of various new and innovative services or products, entrance into the markets that are new, incrementing the loyalty of customers, attracting customers, who are new, incrementing sales and reducing or decrementing the costs. However, there are certain leaders, who do have all the attributes of good leadership, still they suffer and experience unexpected misfortune. These misfortunes can occur from economic recessions, strikes, natural calamities and many more (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). These types of unexpected and uncontrollable misfortunes can create problems and issues in their business strategies. However, the business strategy made by a good leader, does not suffer in these situations. The strategies are made in a such a way that they have the capability to face these situations and the organization does not suffer or experience any losses. Moreover, these business strategies can face any storm and can defend the organization against all types of external, competitive, environmental and internal risks or threats. A good leader even updates and up grades his/her business strategies so that they are up graded with the new technologies and new environment. Business strategies are even responsible for the competitive advantages in an organization (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP is the application of software, which helps in the facilitation of the continuous flow of information within the various functions or functional modules in an enterprise or organization. In other words, Enterprise Resource Planning facilitates the sharing of the information within the several units of organization and several demographic locations (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The main advantages of Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP include the information sharing amongst the organization or enterprise, enabling several decision makers to have a view of the information that is enterprise wide. The other advantages of ERP include providing scalability and flexibility in the business in a cost effective way. Customer relationship management is the approach for managing all types of features of the relationship between the customers and the respective organization (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). It increments the retention and customer loyalty and the organizational profit is incremented. Social media are technologies that are utilized for reaching to the customers or clients. This is the easiest medium for any organization to reach to their customers or clients. Businesses or organizations are also considered as the avenue for communication with the customers and promotion of their brand (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). Moreover, social media even helps in managing the business easily and effectively.
The following report outlines the case study of Dr. Moulton Marston. This report will be helpful to Dr. William Moulton Marston for understanding the information technology strategies for retaining the competitive advantage in the in the market space (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The report will also describe about the advantages of implementation of ERP and also the advantages of implementation of customer relationship management system in the business. The final portion of the report describes about pros and cons of presence of social media in a business. The description is given in the following paragraphs.
Business Strategy
Business strategies are plans for leadership that are undertaken in every business or organization to understand and attain the several organizational goals and objectives. A good leader or a good business analyst makes the strategy for their business and thus help the organization in attaining the goals and objectives (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The specific set of goals and objectives of an organization include growth and development of innovative products and services, entrance into the market that is brand new, reducing or decrementing the costs, incrementing the sales of the organization, attracting the new customers and the incrementing or increasing the loyalty of customers. It is evident that a business often suffers through a lot of ups and downs (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The main unexpected or uncontrollable problems or misfortunes in a business include the economic recessions, strikes, natural calamities and natural disasters. When a good leader makes a business strategy, he makes it in such a way that it can suffer in tough situations and the business will not face any losses. They often update their business strategies so that it is easily acceptable by the internal or external environments and the constant change and modifications in the business. Business strategies even bring competitive advantages to the organization. A competitive advantage is the major aspect of a particular service or product, which is responsible for the overall growth and profit of the organization and the feature that helps to understand the overall competition of the organization from other similar organizations and businesses. Competitive advantages and benefits provide similar service and product either at a low price or with additional value, which fetches the premium prices (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). All types of new and innovative products are made when there is a competitive advantage in the business or the organization. There are several information technology strategies that can be undertaken by Dr. William Moulton Marston for retaining and obtaining the competitive advantages in their market space.
The popular Porter’s Five Forces Model can be utilized in his information technology strategies (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). According to Mr. Michael Porter, the main competitive forces, which can hurt the potential sales of a business are as follows:
i) Customers: The first competitive force is the knowledgeable customers. They have the capability to bring down the prices forcefully simply by building or creating rivalry amongst each other. All organizations want to achieve their business and organizational goals and objectives by defeating their competitors.
ii) Suppliers: The second competitive force for any organization is the influential suppliers, who normally drive down the profits by charging or claiming high prices for the suppliers.
iii) New Market Entrants: The third major competitive force for any organization is the new market entrant (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The new market entrants often have or often steal the potential investment capital. If the new entrants will not come in the market, there will be almost no competition in the market space.
iv) Substitute Products: The fourth or the final major competitive force for any organization is the substitute products. There are many organizations or businesses, which make similar or same products or services. For example, suppose there is a phone company that makes excellent mobile phones and is widely accepted by all customers or clients (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). Suddenly, a new company enters into the market and they claim to be making similar mobile phones with similar features and advantages. Under the pressure of competition, the existing company will try to make better products and with more relevant advantages. This particular force of substitute products can often become competition for the business or organization.
For combating these above mentioned competitive forces, Michael Porter has developed the popular Porter’s Five forces Model, which is an extremely useful tool for understanding the implications of competition for the business strategy (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). These five forces helps in determining the relative attractiveness of a particular industry. The distinct five forces of the Porter’s Five Forces Model are as follows:
i) Buyer Power: Buyer power in the Porter’s Five Forces Model describe the power of buyers. This particular power is high, when the buyers have several sellers to choose. When the number of sellers is higher, the buyer power is higher and when the number of sellers is less, the buyer power is lower. The buyer power normally reflects the ability for directly affecting the price, which the buyers are willing to pay for a particular item. Strong power of buyer is similar to the monopsony (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). Monopsony is a type of market situation, in which only one buyer is present and several suppliers are present. In this particular situation, the buyer is the main person. He sets the price and thus he enjoys all the power. Buyer power can be eradicated or reduced by the manipulation of switching costs, which normally will make the customers reluctant for switching to other products or services. The switching costs involve the intangible and financial values. Another way of reducing the buyer power is with loyalty programs (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). This type of loyalty programs usually reward the customers on the basis of the money spent by them. Loyalty programs even attract the customers. This buyer power is directly related to the business of Dr. William Moulton Marston as the number of sellers is higher and thus the buyer power is high.
ii) Supplier Power: The supplier power is the second force of the Porter’s Five Forces Model. A supply chain consists of all the involvement of the parties in the procurement of a raw material or a product (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). In a specific chain of supplies, an organization consists of both the customers and the suppliers. The relationship between the buyer and the supplier mainly occur when the buyer usually purchases the raw materials from the other suppliers. The power of the supplier is higher when any one supplier has concentrated the power over an industry. The main features that are influenced in an industry for making the power of the supplier high are the limitation in the quality or the services, the charge of higher prices and the shifting of the costs to the participants of the industry (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). This supplier power is directly related to the business of Dr. William Moulton Marston as he will be investing his money in the business and retaining the competitive advantages
iii) Threat of Substitute Products or Services: This is the third force of Porter’s Five Forces Model. The threat of substitute product or service is extremely high when several and various alternatives are present for a particular product or service. Customers have the tendency to opt for better quality products in a cost effective way (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The threat to the substitute products is extremely high when there are many organizations in the market, which make similar products or services. The business of Dr. William Moulton Marston can be in problem if there is a threat of substitute products or services. They should be careful while understanding the threat of the substitute products and services.
iv) Threat of New Entrants: The threat of the new entrants are the fourth force in the Porter’s Five Forces Model. This type of threat is high when the new competitors of the business enter into the market. This type of threat is high when the entrance of the new competitors in the market is the easiest part of their business and lower when there are certain specific barriers in the entry of the competitors (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The barrier to the entrance of the new competitors in the market is the feature of service or product that the customers have from an organization. The threat of the new entrants often turn out to be the most significant problem for any organization and thus the competition is higher in this case.
v) Rivalry among Existing Competitors: The rivalry amongst the existing competitors are the most important feature or competitive force for any business or organization (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The rivalry amongst the existing customers is extremely high the moment the competition is high in the market. The rivalry amongst the existing customers is low when the competition is self satisfied. Competition is extremely high in any organization.
The business focus for the case study of Dr. William Moulton Marston should be done on the basic of the Porter’s Three Generic Strategies. The Porter’s three generic strategies help any business or organization in achieving the competitive advantages. The three generic strategies are as follows:
i) Broad Cost Leadership: The broad cost leadership is the first generic strategy of Porter. The entry barriers have the ability to cut price in retaliation of the potential entrants. The buyer power of the broad cost leadership has the ability to offer low prices to the powerful buyers (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The supplier power is much better from powerful suppliers. There are two types of markets, the broad market and the narrow market. The broad cost leadership operates in broad market and lower costs.
ii) Broad Differentiation: The second generic strategy of Porter is the broad differentiation. The entry barriers are the customer loyalty can discourage the potential entrants (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The buyer power is extremely less for negotiating between less numbers of alternatives. The supplier power is better able to pass on the supplier price.
iii) Focused Strategy: Focused strategy is the third generic strategy of Porter. The entry barriers of this strategy are to focus on the core competencies. The buyer power is extremely less for negotiating between less numbers of alternatives (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The suppliers have power because of the lower volumes.
The three generic strategies would be helpful for the business and thus these should be followed by Dr. William Moulton Marston in his business.
Supply chain management or SCM is the involvement of management of the flow of materials, financial flows and information flows between the stages in a supply chain for maximizing the effectiveness of overall supply chain and profitability. The five basic components of supply chain management include plan, source, make, deliver and return (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). These five components of supply chain management is extremely beneficial for attaining and achieving the organizational goals and objectives. There are two types of supply chain management. They are the supply chain planning systems and supply chain execution systems. The main benefits of supply chain management include improvement of customer service and enabling the companies in bringing the products. This would be extremely beneficial for the business of Dr. William Moulton Marston.
Dr. William Moulton Marston will be getting the advantages and benefits of implementation of enterprise resource planning. The main advantages of ERP include excessive competition, efficiency, forecasting, collaboration of several functional modules, scalability, cost effective, integrated information, mobility, streamlines processes, high productivity and flexibility (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The most important advantage that Dr. Marston would be getting after the implementation of ERP is the high security. ERP is extremely secured and thus the business would be in safe hands.
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Database Management System |
Enterprise Resource Planning |
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1. Database management system is the system that is utilized for managing and storing the organization’s database. |
1. Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP is the application of software, which helps in the facilitation of the continuous flow of information within the various functions or functional modules in an enterprise or organization. |
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2. Database management system does not deal with the different functional models of an organization. |
2. Enterprise Resource Planning does not deal with any of the database management of any organization. |
The above mentioned differences clearly state about the differences between database management system and enterprise resource planning (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). Dr. William Moulton Marston should opt for enterprise resource planning in his business rather than database management system.
The main components of enterprise resource planning are as follows:
i) Customer Relationship Management
iii) Human Resources
iv) Finance
v) Marketing
These five components together constitute a flexible enterprise resource planning (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). Dr. Moulton Marston would be getting all the features or benefits from the implementation of ERP in his organization.
The extended enterprise resource planning has four distinct components. These components are as follows:
i) Business Intelligence
ii) Customer Relationship Management
iii) Supply Chain Management
iv) Ebusiness.
This particular business should select customer relationship management or CRM and supply chain management or SCM as these two components will be extremely beneficial for any organization in a cost effective way (Baltzan and Phillips 2008).
The main consideration that is to be taken into account are the advantages of enterprise resource planning in the business. The main advantages of enterprise resource planning include excessive competition, efficiency, forecasting, collaboration of several functional modules, scalability, cost effective, integrated information, mobility, streamlines processes, high productivity and flexibility (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The most important advantage that Dr. Marston would be getting after the implementation of ERP is the security.
Customer relationship management is the approach for managing all types of features of the relationship between the customers and the respective organization. It increments the retention and customer loyalty and the organizational profit is incremented. Customer relationship management allows a particular organization for gaining insights into the buying behaviour of customers (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). A customer relationship management system tracks down the communication between the customer and the provider. This particular feature helps to improve the overall productivity of the organization by taking into account or consideration the feedback of the customers and thus the organization becomes successful in achieving the organizational goals and objectives. There are three phases in the evolution of customer relationship management. The three phases include reporting, analysis and predicting.. the reporting phase of customer relationship management helps to recognize the particular customers in every application. The second phase divided the organizational segments like best customers or worst customers (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The third phase is the predicting phase. This phase helps the organizations by providing relevant predictions that can happen in near future.
There are three types of customer relationship management. They are operational, analytical and collaborative customer relationship management. The operational CRM deals with the marketing automation, sales automation and service automation. The collaborative CRM deals with the Internet, E-mails, call centres and face to face contact (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The analytical customer relationship management only deals with the analysis of data. Dr. Moulton Marston will be getting the advantages of the implementation of customer relationship management system in his business. The operational customer relationship management system increases the day to day operations in marketing, sales and customer service. Operational customer relationship management utilizes various tools and technologies for performing the tasks for marketing, sales and customer service. Marketing customer relationship management systems have the ability for transforming into a new way of doing business by the utilization of customer relationship management (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The three main operational CRM tools that are utilized in marketing are list generators, campaign management and cross selling and up selling. Similarly for sales purpose, there are again three types of sales customer relation management. They are the sales management, contact management and opportunity management. These above mentioned technologies help to increase the sales of any organization in the day to day operation. For the improvement of customer services, the three operational customer relationship management are the contact centre, web based sell service. Dr. William Moulton Marston will be getting the several advantages of customer relationship management and moreover the day to day operations are also evaluated by utilizing the tools and technologies.
Social media are technologies that are utilized for reaching to the customers or clients (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). This is the easiest medium for any organization to reach to their customers or clients. Businesses or organizations are also considered as the avenue for communication with the customers and promotion of their brand. Moreover, social media even helps in managing the business easily and effectively. Dr. Moulton Marston should understand that social media could be the best medium of communication (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). The brand of the products are promoted is the organization is on social media. This is the easiest way of communication. Moreover, marketing of any product can be easily done in the presence of a social media.
Clara Osbourne Technologies has made the Whovian Pandorica’s Database Management System (DBMS). However, there are other organizations as well who make similar products. The best example in the field of database management system is Oracle. This was marketed and produced by Oracle Corporation.
The second example of such databases is the DB2. This was the product from IBM. It is an extremely high quality software that helps in storing, manipulating and retrieving the data.
The third example in this field of databases is the Microsoft SQL Server. It is the RDBMS or relational database management system. It was developed by the most popular organization namely, Microsoft.
The business should learn how to handle and manage the presence of social media. They should hire proper relevant experts for the management of social media for their business (Baltzan and Phillips 2008). Moreover, strict laws should be enforced so that the cyber hackers do not get involve in any type of hacking.
The above mentioned three organizations have extremely strong impact of presence in the social media.
The social media policy is as follows:
This policy provides guidance for employee use of social media, which should be broadly understood for purposes of this policy to include blogs, wikis, micro blogs, message boards, chat rooms, electronic newsletters, online forums, social networking sites, and other sites and services that permit users to share information with others in a contemporaneous manner.
There are few rules or principles that should be maintained by all employees.
Conclusions
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that, Dr. William Moulton Marston is suffering from dilemma in the business. There are four aspects or features that are noticed in the report. The four features or aspects are information technology strategies, advantages of the implementation of enterprise resource planning in the business, advantages or benefits of the implementation of customer relationship management in the business and the pros and cons of the presence of social media in a business. Dr. William Moulton Marston was extremely impressed with the computing firm namely, Clara Osbourne Technologies. This organization has developed the Whovian Pandorica’s Database Management System or DBMS utilizing the Microsoft Access and the Decision Support System using the Microsoft Excel. Dr. Moulton Marston has realised that the business has many things to learn. Moreover, he has also realised that business is required to invest specific amount of money for bringing the business into modern online business world from their recent set up of computer mail order. Dr. Moulton Marston has contacted the organization Clara Osbourne Technologies for proper advise of the business that how can the business can develop their mail order business into the online presence of a cutting edge. Business strategies are certain plans for leadership in a business that helps to attain the long term organizational goals and objectives. These strategies help a business to flourish or grow with respect to the probable environmental and competitive threats or risks. The report has described the Five Forces Model of Porter with proper justifications. Moreover, the business focus is also mentioned in relation with the Porter’s Three Generic Strategies. The benefits or advantages of supply chain management and the types of metrics the business should be using to measure the performance of their Supply Chain Management or SCM. The various upstream and downstream steps are also discussed in the business’s Supply Chain Management. The advantages of the implementation of enterprise resource planning are also described in the report. Enterprise resource planning provides flexibility and scalability to the business in a cost effective way. The report also includes the differentiation between a database management system and an enterprise resource planning system. The core components of enterprise resource planning are also provided in the report. Moreover, relevant justifications are also provided in the report. Customer relationship management or CRM is the stable relationship between the customers and the organizations that brings profit to the business. It increments the retention and customer loyalty and the organizational profit is incremented. The fourth section is the social media. This report describes about the pros and cons of social media in the business. Social media is the best way for communication between the customers and organizations. A proper Social Media Policy is also given in the report for the betterment of the case study of Dr. William Moulton Marston. The recommendations or suggestions that would be suitable for the business are as follows:
i) Implementation of a proper and cost effective enterprise resource planning in the business is the best suggestion for the organization.
ii) The second recommendation for the business or the organization would be maintaining a healthy and good relationship with the customers.
iii)The third recommendation for this organization would be maintaining and following a good supply chain management in their business.
iv) The fourth recommendation for this organization would be providing loyalty programs to the existing customers so that the existing and the new customers are attracted to the business.
v) The fifth recommendation for the organization would be being careful with the communication and interaction in the social media as social media can welcome several problems or issues.
The above mentioned recommendations would be extremely helpful to the organization and Dr. William Moulton Marston would be able to implement his business strategies easily ad effectively in the business.
References
Baltzan, P. and Phillips, A., 2008. Business driven information systems. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
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