Hi6006 Strategy: Competitive Advantage And Assessment Answers

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Introduction 

In relation with the attainment of competitive advantage, various companies are unique measures and amongst those unique measures, one of the trending and effective measures is adaptation of enterprise system. Enterprise system is one of the great contributions of technology which ultimately helps the organization to enhance its efficiency. It is a process influenced by automation which helps the organization to perform its tasks without putting many efforts and it also helps the organization to acquire higher outcomes. Although, there are numerous factors through which competitive advantage could be attained but contemporary business organizations have mainly concentrated over adaptation of enterprise system for the accomplishment of their tasks so that positive outcomes could be attained (Sharma & Sykes, 2018).

The aim of this report will be to determine the effective of enterprise system and its contribution in attainment of competitive advantage. With regards to this, three strategies will be discussed in order to analyse how enterprise system can allow company to attain competitive advantage. Further, report will aim to analyse the efficiency of enterprise system by analysing two big company’s operations which are already operating their functionalities with enterprise system.

Competitive advantage and Strategic Planning 

Competitive advantage is the term used in business context when two or more than two companies compete in order to gain the leading board position. When one company gain competitive edge over other company, other becomes more powerful, effective as well as efficient. In order to gain competitive advantage, companies adopt various measures such as introducing new and advanced methodologies at workplace for enhancing productivity, providing training and development sessions for enhancing employees’ efficiency, etc. With the effect of all these measures, organization could easily be able to accomplish its goals and objectives which ultimately help in attaining competitive advantage. Another crucial objective behind attainment of competitive advantage is enhancing its sales, revenues and profitability along with developing brand image in the marketplace. Developing brand image is the main attribute for attaining sustainable growth and development in competitive business environment because goodwill of an organization act as the pull strategy under which customers becomes brand loyal along with this, it becomes easy for the organization to retain its existing and potential customers along with target new customer segments.

With the help of an effective enterprise system, an organization could easily enhance its efficiency as it is influenced by automation which does not require human efforts. Once coding is done along with feeding the requirements of organization, that particular task will be automatically accomplished with accurate results. For example, enterprise system plays vital role in making financial statements of an organization. Traditionally, financial statements were made by hands which were a lengthy process and there were huge chances of errors which were used to be recognised after making all financial reports and due to whole procedure needs to be analysed again for rectifying particular mistake. But, with the introduction of enterprise system, organization could easily make their financial statements with just one click, thus, it has reduced the consumption of time and human resources due to which those employees could be shifted to other departments for accomplishing other organizational tasks in order to gain set goals and objectives. With regards to the adaptation of enterprise system, it is must for an organization to analyse its requirements along with determining the external market conditions. This helps the organization to adopt appropriate techniques and measures in relation with the gaining competitive advantage. This report will include the strategies adopted by Coles and Samsung Corporation with regards to the enterprise system. These companies have adopted enterprise system in order to enhance their performance along with the objective of accomplishing the tasks in order to attain set goals and objectives (Alles, et. al., 2018).

With the help of enterprise system, both organizations i.e. Coles and Samsung Corporation have attained an effective market share in their respective markets. Coles Supermarkets Australia Pty Ltd. is functioning as Coles. It is a large retail and consumer service provider chain with its headquarters in Melbourne. Coles is a subsidiary company of Wesfarmers and with more than 100,000 employees, organization has developed its brand image in the Australian retail industry. Coles and Woolworths are two giant players of Australian retail industry and both of these have acquired large part of the Australian market due to which chances for new entrants are very less to set up their business against giant players. After adaptation of enterprise system, organizational performance has been improved and this has leaded the organization to defend its acquired position in the target market. With the objective of gaining competitive advantage over each other, both Coles and Woolworths Limited implement unique and advanced measures (Goodyear, 2017).

Samsung Corporation is another multinational conglomerate with its headquarters in Seoul. Company operates in various areas and in relation to this; organization is requires to adopt various strategies through which they could attain competitive advantage in the particular area. With the help of enterprise system, Samsung is being able to manage its operations in an effective manner. Enterprise system has helped the organization in various ways such as resolving grievances, resolving technical issues, etc. Apart from this, enterprise system also helps the organization to make annual reports, financial statements, etc. with zero percent of error. With the help of implementation of enterprise system by Samsung, growth of 25-30% has been recognised. Ultimately, these measures become the major contributors for attaining competitive advantage (Voronkova, et. al., 2017).

In relevance with the enterprise system, following strategies have been adopted by both the companies in their value chain activities for the objective of gaining competitive advantage:

Cost Leadership

Cost leadership is the most effective strategy through which organization could easily attain competitive advantage. This is adopted in order to reduce the cost of production as well as for enhancing the revenues, sales and profitability. With regards to the cost leadership strategy, organizations reduces their cost of production by adopting various measures such as waste management, just in time manufacturing system, lean manufacturing, etc. Cutting unnecessary cost is the measure objective of this strategy and this could easily be done with the help of implementing enterprise system as it reduces requirement of human resources, generates less waste along with high returns (Ali & Miller, 2017).

Coles (Supermarket)

Coles is one of the giant retail industrialists in the Australian retail industry and in order to maintain its acquired position, organization requires adopting new measures on regular basis for matching up with the latest trends of business environment. Coles and Woolworths are primary rivals for each other and both implements new strategies for the objective of acquiring each other’s market share. In relevance with this, Coles will be able to accomplish its set goals with the help of cost leadership strategy. This strategy will help the organization to gain new customer segments along with retaining existing customers which will ultimately lead the organization to gain adequate market share in the target market (Hunjra, Faisal and Gulshion, 2017). Along with the enterprise system, cost leadership strategy will act as an essential and effective strategy for the accomplishment of set goals. This will ultimately help the organization to attain competitive advantage in the target market. Cost leadership strategy focuses on reduction in cost of production, thus, it does not create any negative impact over the organizational performance. It will help the organization to enhance its revenues, sales, profitability as well as customer base (Waseem-Ul-Hameed, Ali & Arif, 2017).

Samsung (IT Industry) 

Samsung always believes in innovation and creativity in order to enhance organizational performance as well as to meet with the target customer’s demands and wants. With regards to this, organization has focused towards cost leadership strategy. This strategy helps the organization to set up its effective position in the global market along with gaining competitive edge over its competitors such as Apple Inc., Xiaomi, etc. Apart from this, organization also believes in strategic planning to implement the strategies so that positive outcomes could be attained (Kurt & Zehir, 2016). With the help of enterprise system, organization has been able to adopt unique and innovative strategies for making their products more efficient and effective. When Samsung entered into mobile phone’s market, Nokia was leading the worldwide market and in relation with this, organization faced failure many time but with the help of unique measures, hard work and commitment towards gaining competitive edge, Samsung is one of the leading smartphones’ manufacturers across the globe. Enterprise system along with cost leadership strategy has helped the organization acquire the opportunities present in different parts of the globe which has ultimately enhanced organizational performance in the global market.

Change management

This strategy is one of the crucial strategy through which organizational performance could be improved. Every company should adopt this strategy in order to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of their products along with producing new and innovative products. Continuous improvement and change management is the key to success for an organization (Wu, et. al., 2017). 

Coles (Supermarket)

Coles is one of giant player of retail industry in Australian market. It is a subsidiary company of Wesfarmers which is another big player of retail industry. In order to maintain its acquired image in the target market, organization has adopted enterprise system in order to enhance the effectiveness of their innovative and creative practices. Along with this, Coles is also planning to differentiate their image from its competitors by effective strategic planning so that every task could be accomplished in an effective and appropriate manner (Hayes, 2018). Organization is using enterprise system for collecting their customer’s data on the basis of their purchasing pattern so that their future demands could be fulfilled. Along with this, consistent learning is helping the organization to make its products unique and efficient through which customer satisfaction which ultimately helps the organization to uplift its performance along with developing brand image in the target market (Mahmud, Ramayah & Kurnia, 2017).

Samsung (IT)

With the help of consistent learning strategy influenced by enterprise system, Samsung has created an effective brand image amongst the target market. In order to provide new and unique features, organization adopted enterprise system with regards to the fulfilment of target audiences’ demands and wants. Apart from this, organization focuses on analysing its competitors’ strategies, products and services so that the appropriate and relevant aspects could be provided in order to enhance the effectiveness of their products in comparison to the competitors. Samsung has adopted enterprise system in its value chain activities and organization believes in strategic planning so that the plans made by organization could be executed in an appropriate manner. This helps the organization to accomplish its desired goals and objectives through which competitive advantage could easily be attained (Tan, Tan & San, 2018).

Overall development

Every company must focus on overall development rather focusing on only one department or sector in order to enhance its performance. Teamwork, collaboration, etc. are certain terms which are crucial as well as effective for an organization in relation with gaining competitive advantage as well as in attaining set goals and objectives. Thus, it is required for the organization to focus on overall development of the organization by adopting centric approach. Strategic planning is the primary approach through which overall development of the organization could easily be done (Rezvani, Dong & Khosravi, 2017).

Coles (Supermarket)

In terms of overall development of organization, management has considered enterprise system as one of the most effective measure and along with this, organization has also focused on employee encouragement, customer feedback, interactive sessions, etc. as an important tools for gathering relevant and crucial information with regards to improving organizational performance. These attributes ultimately helps the organization to promote teamwork and collaboration through which organization could easily attain its set goals.

Samsung (IT)

In order to grab target audience’s attention towards organizational products and services with the objective of gaining large part of market share, overall development strategy has been considered as the most effective strategy. In relevance to this, organization requires to focus on every sector of the organization like from production to marketing and sales in order to attain set goals along with enhancing customer satisfaction (Appelbaum, et. al., 2017).   

Conclusion 

It has been concluded that organization should focus on growth and development as these are one of the primary objectives for an organization in terms of gaining competitive advantage as well as these are essential for sustaining for longer period of time in the market. With regards to the enterprise system, organization is required to adopt unique and advanced strategies in order to grow and sustain for longer period of time. In this report, enterprise system has been disused with relevance to the functionalities of Coles and Samsung Corporation.

References

Ali, M. And Miller, L., 2017. Erp System Implementation In Large Enterprises–A Systematic Literature Review. Journal Of Enterprise Information Management, 30(4), Pp.666-692.

Alles, M., Brennan, G., Kogan, A. and Vasarhelyi, M.A., 2018. Continuous monitoring of business process controls: A pilot implementation of a continuous auditing system at Siemens. In Continuous Auditing: Theory and Application (pp. 219-246). Emerald Publishing Limited.

Appelbaum, D., Kogan, A., Vasarhelyi, M. and Yan, Z., 2017. Impact of business analytics and enterprise systems on managerial accounting. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 25, pp.29-44.

Goodyear, M., 2017. Enterprise System Architectures: Building Client Server and Web Based Systems. CRC press.

Hayes, J., 2018. The theory and practice of change management. Routledge.

Hunjra, A.I., Faisal, F. and Gulshion, F., 2017. The Impact of Cost Leadership Strategy and Financial Management Control System on Organizational Performance: An Empirical Investigation of Pakistani Service Sector.

Kurt, A. and Zehir, C., 2016. The relationship between cost leadership strategy, total quality management applications and financial performance.

Mahmud, I., Ramayah, T. and Kurnia, S., 2017. To use or not to use: Modelling end user grumbling as user resistance in pre-implementation stage of enterprise resource planning system. Information Systems, 69, pp.164-179.

Rezvani, A., Dong, L. and Khosravi, P., 2017. Promoting the continuing usage of strategic information systems: The role of supervisory leadership in the successful implementation of enterprise systems. International Journal of Information Management, 37(5), pp.417-430.

Sharma, S. And Sykes, T.A., 2018. Goal Orientations And Their Impacts On Advice Ties And Employee Outcomes: A Longitudinal Field Study of an Enterprise System Implementation.

Tan, B., Tan, F.T.C. and Sun, Y., 2018. Social Shaping Leadership in Enterprise System Acquisition and Development: The Influence of Reference Users in Xizi Holdings. Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (JITTA), 19(2), p.8.

Voronkova, O.V., Kurochkina, A.A., Firova, I.P. And Bikezina, T.V., 2017. Implementation Of An Information Management System For Industrial Enterprise Resource Planning. Revista Espacios, 38(49).

Waseem-Ul-Hameed, F.H., Ali, M. And Arif, M., 2017. Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) System: Implementation Problem and Role of Audit Effectiveness in Malaysian Firms. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 5, p.11.

Wu, C.H., Chiu, R.K., Yeh, H.M. and Wang, D.W., 2017. Implementation of a cloud-based electronic medical record exchange system in compliance with the integrating healthcare enterprise’s cross-enterprise document sharing integration profile. International journal of medical informatics, 107, pp.30-39.