Management Information System free essay sample

Coca-Cola Company is the worlds largest nonalcoholic beverage company. It offers a portfolio of world class quality sparkling and still beverages, starting with Coca-Cola ® and extending through over 400 soft drinks, juices, teas, coffees, waters, sports and energy drinks that refresh, hydrate, nourish, relax and energize. Coca-Cola has more than 400 brands are nearly 2,400 beverage products. Four of the worlds top-five soft-drink brands are: Coca-Cola, Diet Coke ®, Sprite ® and Fanta ®. Thums Up and Limca, which are formulated to appeal to local cultures and lifestyles. With operations in more than 200 countries, we have a diverse workforce of approximately 55,000 Company employees. Coca Cola family of beverages accounts for approximately 1. 3 billion servings worldwide of the 50 billion beverage servings consumed every day-a figure that indicates both strength and growth opportunity of the company. Coca-Cola Production Description The Rejuvenation division offers a range of drinks designed to improve how people feel physically and mentally. Products include ready-to-drink coffees, teas and herbal beverages. FedEx is actually divided between FedEx Ground, only delivering to business, FedEx Home Delivery, only going to residential neighborhoods, FedEx Freight, overnight planes around the world, and many other branches to meet the demands of all different types customers. This customer satisfaction is a key to success in the new global economy. FedEx is also one of the first companies to come out with state of the art technology such as Insight which will help recruit and retain more customers in the long run. Staying in the lead of this information technology will help FedEx to adapt to changing economies better then UPS who is struggling to maintain the competitive advantage. Fedex has the better IT investment strategy and will hopefully grow to the size of UPS. 2. Is FedEx â€Å"move, communicate, and shoot†? IT strategy a good one for its competitive battle with UPS? Why or why not? Is it a good model of competitive IT strategy for other types of companies? Defend your position. FedEx has chosen the competitive strategy of innovation and it works for them. Since FedEx is a mature brand, they really donaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t need to grow or break into a new market. Lowering prices wonaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t help too much since the competitor could easily lower their prices as well. FedEx has to find new and creative ways to appeal to the consumer so they will choose them for their shipping needs and his is done through their IT. If FedEx wants to stay ahead of UPS, then their slogan of aâ‚ ¬? move, communicate, and shootaâ‚ ¬? helps them figure out the edge they have on the competition. An example is their Insight product. They have found a way to track shipments, let the customers know that it is available, and execution of the new product. If they were to sit back and relax, then UPS could hav e developed this technology first giving them the advantage. The keep moving (innovation) strategy is a good strategy for certain companies and it is not the best process for other companies. Companies who are mature can take the opportunity to innovate and keep it fresh for their customers. Also, these companies need to have the resources to be able to spend on technology, people, and experimentation. Many pizza places or food delivery places offer online ordering, this new way of doing business can help retain customers who might have been tired of the same old from their food place. Some businesses would not thrive with the innovation strategy. For example, companies who are trying to grow or trying to reduce their costs to lower their prices. A company that is growing or a start-up just wants to get into the market so they may be more concerned with differentiation. They want people to know they are out there. A company with a cost leadership strategy doesnaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t want to increase their costs because they may have to bump up the price to the consumer and that could lead to a loss of a competitive advantage for them. A widget maker who produces the same thing on an assembly line probably doesnaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t care too much about innovative ways to stay ahead of other widget makers. 3. FedEx CIO Carter says his company is in the business of engineering time. Is this a good vision for FedEx? Why or why not? How vital is IT to this definition of FedEx’S business? Use examples from the case to illustrate your answer. The idea that Carter believes FedEx is in the business of engineering time is a good business vision for FedEx because the world and its technology is always changing. With technology comes managing and engineering time, keeping up with the changes in the society we live in. This is a good vision for FedEx because when society changes, FedEx acts upon it, communicates and keeps moving forward. They keep up with society and technology changes by innovating new ideas to remain competitive. FedEx believes in offering solutions that allow you to engineer time so things can happen that werenaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t able to happen in the past (Carter/Oaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢Brien 44). Information technology is very important to this definition of FedExaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s business. Information technology is seen as a competitive advantage for FedEx. FedExaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s main and biggest competitor is UPS, and in second is DHL. Both companies are continually trying to make the challenges harder for FedEx and in particular CIO Rob Carter. UPS and FedEx have been at battle on technology especially customer based technology. aâ‚ ¬? We tend to focus slightly less on operational technology. We focus a little more on revenue generating, customer satisfaction generating, strategic advantage technology (Carter/Oaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢Brien Pg. 43). Carter believes in having technology that will increase the top lin One example from the case study that Carter mentioned was a product called Insight. This product allows customers to not only track their package but also to see every inbound package whether or not you knew someone was sending it to you (Carter/Oaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢Brien 43). Having this Insight product has been vital for FedEx because it has given them an infotech competitive advantage over UPS. Staying competitive in a large business like FedEx is extremely important and if you donaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t stay on the heels of competitors the business could plummet faster than it took to get the business going. For FedEx to remain competitive in what they do they must have employees or an innovation team that does nothing but look for new opportunities. Another example the case study mentions is the war on terror. Information technology helps FedEx in this way because the system that they use compared to others is that they can visibly see every transaction that takes place. When shipping something through FedEx no one remains anonymous because a lot of the packages are going across borders. The system that FedEx has helps keep terrorists who want to ship over bombs or other harmful things away from their service. FedExaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s technological advances allow their business to be secure, and also receive the help of the DEA, the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Defense, and various foreign agencies to keep their business safe, loyal, and reliable.