(1) The Example of Competitive (Strategic) Advantage
Apple’s IOS
The definition of Competitive (Strategic) Advantage:
A company’s technology gives it an edge in attracting customers and felling competitors, and helps it control the market and earn above-average profits.
Reason:Apple’s IOS system is more secure and fluid than other mobile phone systems, helping it attract a large number of customers. It also makes Apple the most profitable company in the mobile phone market. Therefore, Apple’s IOS system is an example of providing Competitive Strategic Advantage.
(2) The Example of Competitive (Strategic) Necessity:
Face recognition unlocking technology in the mobile phone industry.
The definition of Competitive (Strategic) Necessity:
-Something the organization must do in order to survive
Reason:
Face recognition unlocking technology has become a cornerstone of the mobile phone industry, and if one company doesn’t adopt it, customers will choose other companies’ products because their phones aren’t convenient enough. Then the company can’t survive. So Face recognition unlocking technology is an example of providing Competitive technology (in the mobile phone industry).
1.Fail to be forefront and consistently ahead in developing and commercializing new technologies
The middle mile problems include latency bottlenecks, throughput constraints, and reliability problems, peering points are often overburdened, causing packet loss and service degradation. The reason for the middle mile problem is too long, usually spanning hundreds of thousands of miles and the scope of its definition is vague , the existing model is not good enough.
The economic reasons behind the problem is there are Very little economic incentive to build out capacity, networks want to minimize traffic coming into their network that they don’t get paid for.So it is hard to use a lot of money to totally update the equipment of such a long middle mile.
Tesla probides customers with different speed networks at different prices,and at the same time launches a package services,trying to make customer pay more,destroying the fair principle of network neutrality.Because network owners should not discriminate against particular applications and content providers.
Favouring reason: This practice increases the company’s revenue
Against reason:Excessive fees make not all customers can enjoy advanced technology well
The form of e-commerce Netflix is pure E-commerce.
It’s Product is online (Online video resource) ,delivery methd is also electronic channel(Watch video online or send video resources by e-mail),and process is digital process(Online order and payment).So i think it Netflix is pure E-commerce
Two phenomena of distribution
1.Hit products “naturally monopolize” light consumers
2.Niche products have a double disadvantage:”They are not well known” and “When they become known, it is by people who “know better” and prefer the popular products”
Two suggentions to Amazon:
1. Acquire and manage customers by using Amazon’s popular products:
Example:Bundling hit products (as loss leaders) with obscure or older products that are cheaper to acquire.Like bundling hot-selling movies with slow-moving movies and offering certain discounts to attract consumers.
2. Even though obscure products may have a higher profit margin, resist the temptation to direct customers to the tail too often, or you’ll risk their dissatisfaction.
Example:Promoting obscure products at the same time as popular movies can sell obscure products with high profits and avoid customer dissatisfaction.
Permission-based:know as license-based marketing,refer to any marketing activity where you gain customer permission and may be able to probide customers with the expected,personalized,and relevant information.Sends specific information only to people who have indicated interest.
Permission-based Example:Example: Push the exclusive discount activity information according to whether the member subscribes to the notification information and member’s perference.
Interruption-based refers Marketers look for a medium or an environment where a prospective customer is likely to use or frequent, and stop him/her with an ad.Sends general promotional message through the mass media
Interruption-based Example: Push discount information to all customers with known contact information.
Difference:The fundamental difference is whether it is based on the wishes of the customer. Permission-based marketing pays more attention to the wishes of customers, while Interruption-based does not care about this.
One is eWom marketing but not an example of viral marketing. The brand company will send product promotion, event, and promotion information to the company’s member customers by email or text message, hoping that member customers will promote effectively to their friends at the same time. Rather than mass proliferation on social media. The person being promoted will be more convinced because the news comes from their acquaintances. This method pays more attention to the credibility of the spread of information, rather than the scope of marketing, so it is Ewom rather than viral marketing.
Word-of-mouth (WoM) is a topic that has been of interest to marketing researchers for more than five decades. It can loosely be defined as the sharing of information about a product, promotion, et cetera, between a consumer and a friend, colleague, or other acquaintance .
Compared with traditional WOM marketing, EWom marketing spreads faster, and it is easier for us to get complete data feedback, but its main way of spreading is through word of mouth among friends and acquaintances.
Viral marketing is defined as electronic word of mouth. It is characterized by a greater than transmission rate 1. It means that one person will transmit information to multiple people. Another feature is to cooperate with social media for large-scale communication.
Therefore, the difference between viral marketing and eWom marketing is that eWom mainly focuses on word-of-mouth communication among acquaintances, and pays more attention to the quality and credibility of the information to be disseminated, but does not overly pursue the scope of dissemination. Viral marketing pays more attention to rapid and widespread dissemination on social media, and focuses more on the scale of marketing than the quality of information.
Example:After the user’s online account with a credit card is stolen, the thief directly uses the credit card information in the account to make purchases without the need for the security code of the credit card.
Solution:Freeze the stolen account immediately, or freeze the bound credit card directly to prevent a fraudulent card transactions.
Example of “Single use”:Use Bitcoin as a means of payment
The characteristics of this type of application are:1.Create better, less costly, highly focused solutions
2.Easiest place to start
In the early days of the development of the Internet of Things, Bitcoin provided instant value to a few people who simply used it as an alternative payment method, in other words it was used as a one-time transaction tool. So it meets the definition of “single use” application of IOT.
Example of “transformation” application:Blockchain application: “Smart contracts”
Reason:The characteristics of such applications are that they may change the nature of economic, social and political systems.”Smart contracts” may be the most transformative blockchain application currently. It is possible to completely change the traditional contractual relationship, such as, the company and its employees, the company’s own processes, the role of intermediaries such as lawyers and accountants, etc. will all change. This fits the definition of this category.
Example of “- Localization ” application:Companies such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have used blockchain technology to replace paper and manual transactions.
Reason:The characteristics of such applications are that 1. Need only a limited number of users to create immediate value 2. A natural next step for companies.The above example is just a small-scale experiment among financial companies and is the basis for future technology applications, so it meets the above definition.
Example of “Substitution ” application:Blockchain program that uses self-created virtual currency and provides financial services to the public:”Stellar”
Reason:The characteristics of such applications is Build on existing single-use and localized applications, but involve broader and increasingly public users.To our example,although grassroots adoption has demonstrated the viability of Stellar, to become a banking standard, it will need to influence government policy and persuade central banks and large organizations to use it. That could take years of concerted effort.
1,Modules,Dividethe company into individual modules,sale modules ,R&B modules,etc
Example:Elf Atochem North America uses R/3 modules to support the four processes of material management, production planning, order management and financial reporting.
2.Configuration tables.Configuration tables enable companies to customize specific aspects of the system based on the business methods they chose.
Example:SAP’s R/3, one of the more comprehensive and complex ES offerings, has more than 3,000 configuration tables. An organization can use it to select what kind of inventory accounting—FIFO or LIFO—it will employ or whether it wants to recognize product revenue by geographical unit, product line, or distribution channel.
1. Enterprise systems have a decentralized organizational structure, which is more stable and flexible. Can be used to access operational and financial data in real time, allowing companies to simplify their management structure.
2. Enterprise systems through Centralization of control over information and the standardization of processes, enabling the company to have Hierarchical, command-and-control organizations with uniform cultures.
3. Enterprise systems break down hierarchical structures, freeing people to be more innovative and more flexible, changing the company’s traditional hierarchical structure.
VMI can avoid Multiple Demand Forecast Updates caused by the bulltail effect(Bullwhip effects are created when supply chain members process the demand input from their immediate downstream member in producing their own forecasts.).
How it work:
vendor-managed inventory (VMI):The upstream site would have access to the demand and inventory information at the downstream site and update the necessary forecasts and resupply for the downstream site. The downstream site, in turn, would become a passive partner in the supply chain.
A more detailed explanation is(how it address):
(1) Suppliers to a manufacturer (or retailer) manage the manufacturer’s (or retailer’s) inventory levels based on pre-established service levels
(2) The manufacturer (or retailer) allows the supplier to monitor stock levels and ongoing sales data
– Make demand data at a downstream site available to the upstreamsite
– Both sites can updates their forecasts with the same raw data
EDI can reduce the cost of the paperwork in generating an order.
Cross-selling:Focus on selling many related products
Example:Some history museums sell related historical souvenirs, such as dolls of historical figures and related historical books.
Up-selling:Focus on selling the best and latest products
Example:Bookstores put the highest-selling and latest books in the most prominent position to attract customers.
Difference:Cross-selling pays more attention to the relevance of products rather than popularity, while Up-selling puts popularity first.
Analyzing competitors is more than simple data processing. Companies need to have the right focus, right culture, and right people to give them strength.
For what make the right focus, right culture, and right people.
Right focus:1. Companies need to decide where to direct their analysis resources. The company cannot be too fragmented in the plan and lose its awareness of the business purpose behind each plan. Therefore, several functions or measures should be selected to jointly serve an overall strategy.
2. When allocating resources, consider whether certain functions are suitable for in-depth analysis. The appropriate function model should be selected to apply to the current analysis.
RIght culture: Companies must instill respect for the quantitative evidence of measurement, testing, and evaluation throughout the company. The company should urge employees to make decisions based on the facts derived from the data analysis, and choose the results produced by the data when the data conflicts with other factors. And, however, in some cases, the decision to change or try new things must be made quickly in order to conduct extensive analysis.
Right people: Companies should hire analytical talents. Hire professionals with clear business acumen for data analysis. For example excellent analysts with simple language expressing complex ability, engineers with high conceptual problem-solving ability and quantitative analysis ability, etc.Use them to cultivate a professional analysis team. To get correct and clear analysis results
Classifation:Assignment a newly presented object to one of a set of predefined classes.Used when groups are known.
Classifation application example:Classifying credit applicants as low, medium, or high risk. Such as Alipay’s credit prediction function.
Clustering:Grouping related records together on the basis of having similar values for attributes (e.g. age groups, income levels, etc.).Used when groups are unknown
Clustering application example:Targeting certain groups of customers in marketing campaigns.Define different customer types through the results of marketing activities.
Different:Classifation is used when groups are known and Clustering used when groups are unkonwn.
Estimation:Comes up with a value for some unknown continuous variable (e.g. income,
order size, credit card balance) given some input data.
Estimation application example:Estimating the probability that someone will respond to a marketing promotion.Such as Nike’s membership interest evaluation function.
Association Discovery:Find associations or correlations among sets of items (e.g. items typically purchased together)
Association Discovery application example:Redesign the store’s layout and optimize the customers’“navigational path” though the store
Mismeasurement of inputs and output
iutput mismeasurement example:
Conduct IT training for the personnel of a company, and the training fee is only included in the input of this year
reason: Generally speaking, the way input mismeasurement affects the IT productivity paradox is: It is difficult to measure IT stock itself. For any given amount of output, if the level of IT stock used is overestimated, then its unit productivity will appear to be less than it really is.In the above example, the effect of IT training will overflow for many years, but the cost statistics will only be calculated into the current year, causing the income of that year to be far below the expected level.
Output mismeasurement example:
Reason: Bank ATM machines provide customers with 24-hour service
Reason:It products may bring many advantages to the company, but there are many outputs that cannot be measured by data. For example, ATM machines can provide services 24 hours a day, customers can operate independently, and can avoid operator errors. These hidden advantages may increase customer stickiness for the bank, but the data can only reflect the number of people using ATM to conduct transactions. At the time, it ignores the other advantages of ATM machine, resulting in the calculated income is lower than the actual
It is not a free software:
1. Software that is not open source software, although anyone can use it, but cannot be modified and shared (in modified or unmodified form)
2. Not completely free software, some services still require users to pay.
3. It is not Public domain software, Facebook owns the copyright.
4. The source code is not open to the public.
Risk reduction:Taking active countermeasures to protect your systems(condition High risk cannot accepted)
Example:Take emergency measures when risks occur, such as crisis public relations to deal with public opinion risks.
Risk transference:Having someone else absorb the risk
Example:Sign a risk-taking contract, and the two parties share the risk.
Difference：Risk reduction takes a proactive approach to deal with risks, while Risk transference is a passive way to reduce risks.
Risk acceptance: Implementing no countermeasures and simply absorbing any damages that occur
Example：When there is a crisis of public opinion, take the initiative to admit mistakes to the public.
Risk avoidance:Using alternate means,or not perform tasks that would cause risk
Example：When the company’s plan 1 is at risk, choose the lower risk plan 2
Problem：
1.Without CA encryption, your account information may be leaked, which is insecure.
2.Other users may not trust your account and refuse to accept your message.
How address the problem:
1.CA use a trusted third party that issues digital certificates
2. CA uses its own digital signature to bind a public key with an identit.
3.CAEncrypt public keys and information with private keys.
With the development of it technology, many companies regard it technology as the focus of company development. The article mainly discusses how companies should use it investment to achieve differentiation and gain advantages, and what should be paid attention to.
At the beginning, the article discussed that the technical advantages brought by it will also disappear over time.As a technology emerges, becomes popular, and then becomes a basic technology, the return and income brought by its invested capital will continue to decline. This requires investors to make good use of the profit window period in the early stages of technology.
The second article discusses the commercialization of it. Through the development of commercialization, standardization has replaced the advantages of customization.
And it summarizes five reasons：1.IT’s power is outstripping most of the business needs it fulfills.2.the price of essential IT functionality has dropped to the point where it is more or less affordable to all.3.the capacity of the universal distribution network (the Internet) has caught up with demand—indeed, we already have considerably more fiber-optic capacity than we need. 4.IT vendors are rushing to position themselves as commodity suppliers or even as utilities.5.the investment bubble has burst, which historically has been a clear indication that an infrastructural technology is reaching the end of its build out.
Finally, the article discusses that companies should focus on core management costs rather than innovation, because most companies’ investment in it has not been rewarded accordingly.
Uber is not a typical disruptive innovation
The first reason given in the article is that usually disruptive innovations originate from low-end or new market footholds, but Uber’s development direction is the opposite: first establish a position in the mainstream market, and then attract low-end markets.
And the usual disruptive innovation will be considered by customers as lack of creativity, but Uber is on the contrary, most of its corporate strategy is maintained by innovation.
The second reason is that the general disruptive innovation takes time. It is difficult to have the same quality as the previous model at the beginning of formation, but Uber has from the beginning its competitors have high quality, and the competitors are very It’s hard to surpass.
The long-tail strategy means that merchants not only focus on the goods sold on the shelf,and focus on the profits to be made from the long tail—niche offerings that cannot profitably be provided through brick-and-mortar channels.
Online retailers should pursue the long tail strategy,because with the development of time, consumers can find and afford products that are more in line with their personal preferences, and they will be less and less affected by popular and homogeneous products.At the meanwhile ,in today’s market changes, compared to the rapid growth, the long tail model tends to be longer and relatively flat.Therefore, as time goes by, many obscure products with relatively few target customers will continue to bring more profits for a long time.
Maybe choosing a blockbuster strategy will bring a lot of income in a short time,but from a long-term perspective, the long-tail strategy will eventually bring more revenue.So retailers should pursue the long trail strategy.
In recent years, due to the development of the industrial Internet, GE’s biggest problem is that customers are gradually losing to non-traditional competitors. The goal of these competitors is to transfer the customer’s value proposition from the purchase of reliable industrial equipment to new efficiencies and other benefits through advanced analysis and algorithms based on the data generated by the equipment.
At the same time based on two definitions of the business model: how the organization creates value for its customers and how it captures that value.In response to the crisis, GE began a large-scale investment in industrial Internet research to complete his industrial transformation:
1.GE has made several adjustments to its business strategy，focus on improving customer operational efficiency.
2.GE has experimented with different types of partnerships. Such as independent division to solve the problem.And rely more heavily on crowd sourcing for innovation.
3.Build partnerships with potential competitors.
The Industrial Internet has completely changed GE’s value creation and acquisition. The decision to build a new system is more evolutionary, and GE has formed a new business model. Therefore, the Industrial Internet has revolutionized GE’s business.
The fundamental problem that ELF atochem seek to solve with the implementation of SAP is the dispersion of key information among 12 business units, causing many obstacles：1.The ordering system is not integrated with the production system. 2.Sales forecasts do not rely on budget systems or performance measurement systems. 3.Each department is tracking and reporting its financial data independently.
Due to many incompatible systems, operational data cannot flow smoothly in the organization, and senior management cannot obtain the information needed to make reasonable and timely business decisions.
Therefore, the fundamental problem that ELF atochem seeks to solve is the management difficulties caused by the fragmentation of the company organization.
Two lessons I have learned :
1.A company not only needs to have management data, it also needs to have the ability to analyze the data in detail so that the data can be used effectively.ELF atochem set up a demand manager position to improve the company’s operating efficiency and achieved good results.
2.Should focus on the management module that the company itself needs more.ELF atochem only installs the R/3 module, but not the unnecessary human resource management module.This is so they can pay more attention to customer needs.
The reason why demand forecasting based on the order history from the company’s immediate customers contribute to the bullwhip is: The bullwhip effect refers to changes in the consumer’s information that lead to changes in the entire supply. Each company in the supply chain will make product forecasts for demand. The main basis is: When a downstream operation places an order, the upstream manager processes that piece of information as a signal about future product demand. Based on this signal, the upstream manager readjusts his or her demand forecasts and, in turn, the orders placed with the suppliers of the upstream operation.
Two way:
1.exponential smoothing: Following the new demand data that appears daily, the relevant safety stock is updated.
2. vendor-managed inventory (VMI) or continuous replenishment program (CRP): The upstream site would have access to the demand and inventory information at the downstream site and update the necessary forecasts and resupply for the downstream site. The downstream site, in turn, would become a passive partner in the supply chain.