Managing and Using Information Systems: A

Strategic Approach – Fifth Edition

Keri Pearlson & Carol Saunders

Dr. Mahmood Ali Akbar
[email protected]
Ch
ap
te r1

The Information Systems

Strategy Triangle

PowerPoint® Files by Michelle M. Ramim

Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship
Nova Southeastern University
 Learning Objectives
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Determine the role general managers must take in decisions about

IS

• Define and explain the Information Systems Strategy Triangle

• Understand the alignment between decisions of business strategy,

information systems, and organizational design

• Identify and define the various business strategy frameworks

• Explain the information system strategy matrix

• Understand and apply these models to different organizations

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 Real World Example
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill became the largest marine oil
spill in human history

• An estimated four million barrels per day flowed freely into the gulf
waters

• Straining the marine ecosystem and threatening the shoreline from

Texas to Florida

• A sequence of failures involving multiple companies and work teams

• Repeated failures to follow safety procedures

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 Real World Example (Cont.)
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• A series of Information Technology (IT) failures coupled with

organizational misalignments that ultimately catalyzed the accident

• The crisis illustrates the need for proper alignment of

• Business strategy
• Information Systems (IS)
• Organizational mechanisms
• Practices for designing safety mechanisms

• Issues in organizational culture, process, and leadership at British

Petroleum (BP)
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 The Role of the General Manager
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• A key decisions maker.

• Not necessary to have a deep technical knowledge of there is.
• Aggressively seek to understand the consequences of using
technologies relevant to the business’s environment.
• Ask questions when it’s not clear.
• Should not leave IS decisions solely to the IS professionals

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 Information Systems Alignment
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• An IS that is inappropriate for a given operating environment can

actually inhibit and confuse things, or even lead to a crisis
environments.
• The IS department is not an island within a firm.
• The IS department manages an infrastructure that is essential to the
firm’s functioning .
• A firm’s IS must be aligned with the way it manages its employees
and processes .

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 IS Strategy Triangle
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• The Information Systems Strategy Triangle presented in Figure 1.1

suggests
• Business Strategy drives all other strategies
• Organizational and Information Strategy are then dependent upon
the Business Strategy
• Changes in any strategy requires changes in the others to maintain
balance.
• IS Strategy is affected by the other strategies a firm uses.
• IS strategy always involves consequences

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Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

Figure 1.1 The Information Systems Strategy Triangle

Chapter 1 1-88
 Questions for the General Manager
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• What is a business strategy?

• Which factors influences a business strategy?
• How does a business change its strategy without losing balance or
becoming out of alignment?
• Are there specific events that induce a business to change its
strategies? What are they?

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 Business Strategy
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• A strategy is a coordinated set of actions to fulfill objectives,

purposes and goals
• Strategy starts with a mission.
• Figure 1.2 shows some example mission statements
• A business strategy is a plan articulating where a business seeks to
go and how it expects to get there
• There are several “strategies” worth examining

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 Figure 1.2 – Mission statements of computer companies
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

Company Mission Statement

To provide the best customer service possible. Internally we call
Zappos® this our WOW Philosophy
We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for three
Amazon® primary customer sets: consumer customers, seller customers
and developer customers
L.L. Sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat your
Bean® customers like human beings and they will always come back for
more

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 Generic Strategies Framework
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Michael Porter describes how businesses can build a sustainable

competitive advantage
• “fundamental basis of above-average performance in the long run is
sustainable competitive advantage.”
• He identified three primary strategies for achieving competitive
advantage:
• Cost leadership – lowest-cost producer
• Differentiation – product is unique
• Focus – limited scope

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 Figure 1.3 Three strategies for achieving competitive advantage .
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

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 Porter’s Competitive Advantage
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Remember that a companies overall business strategy will drive all other
strategies
• Porter defined these competitive advantages to represent various business
strategies found in the marketplace
• Cost leadership results when the organization aims to be the lowest-cost
producer in the marketplace
• Through differentiation, the organization qualifies its product or service in a
way that allows it to appear unique in the marketplace

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 Porter’s Competitive Advantage
(Cont.)
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Focus allows an organization to limit its scope to a narrower

segment of the market and tailor its offerings to that group of
customers
o This strategy has two variants:
1. Cost focus
2. differentiation focus

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 Dynamic Environment Strategies
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Porter’s model is useful for diagnostics, or understanding how a

business seeks to profit in its chosen marketplace, and for
prescriptions, or building new opportunities for advantage
• Porter model was developed at a time where the rate of change in
any given industry was relatively slow and manageable
• Newer models were developed to take into account the increasing
turbulence and velocity of the marketplace

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 Hypercompetition Model
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Porter’s model focus on creating competitive advantage, whereas

hypercompetition models suggest that the speed and aggressiveness
of the moves and countermoves in any given market create an
environment in which advantages are rapidly created and eroded
• hypercompetition models
o Fits turbulent environments
o Enables managers respond instantly and change rapidly
o Requires dynamic structures and processes

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 Rapidly Changing Environment and
Marketplace
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Firms focus on their capability to dynamically adjust their

organizational resources, valuing agility itself as the competitive
advantage
• Still focus on customer satisfaction, profit maximization, and other
goals consistent with the business’s values and beliefs
• Utilize components of business intelligence:
o The ability to predict new opportunities, organizational designs that can
sense, restructure, and respond quickly
o Strategic signaling and actions that both surprise and confuse competitors

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 Accelerated Competition
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Since the 1990s, competition led to wider gaps between industry

leaders and laggards
o “winner-take-all” environments
o Greater churn among sector rivals

• Joseph Schumpeter predicted the “creative destruction” over 60

years ago
• Sharp increases in the quality and quantity of IT investment
• The changes in competitive dynamics are particularly striking in
sectors that spend the most on IT

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 Competitive Dynamics Models
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Destroy Your Business (DYB)- strategic planning implemented by

leadership guru Jack Welch at General Electric (GE)
o GE employees develop strategies to destroy GE’s competitive advantage

• Grow Your Business (GYB) - strategy to find fresh ways to reach new
customers and better serve existing ones
o Complete disruption of current practices
o Take actions to protect GE business before competitors hone in on its
weaknesses

• Implicit assumption underlying DYB is that GE would not be able to

sustain its position in the marketplace over the long term

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 Examples of Competitive Dynamics
Models
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• A similar strategy of cannibalizing their own products was used by

Apple® and GilletteTM.
• Apple introduced the iPhone® while iPod® sales were brisk, and the
iPad® while its Macintosh sales were strong
• Apple continues to exhibit this strategy with subsequent releases of
new models of all of its products
• Gillette spent resources to convince customers to upgrade to the
newer and more expensive products

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 IS Planning and Strategic Advantage
Models
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• General Managers cannot afford to rely solely on IS personnel to make IS

decisions
• Business strategy drives IS decision making
• Changes in business strategy should entail reassessments of IS
• Changes in IS potential should trigger business strategy reassessments (i.e.
the Internet)
• Information Systems Strategy Triangle shows the proper balance of
strategies
• The models are helpful in discussing the role of IS in building and
sustaining competitive advantage

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 FIGURE 1.4: Summary of strategic approaches and IT applications
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

Strategic Key Idea Application to Information

Approach Systems
Porter’s Firms achieve competitive Understanding which strategy is
generic advantage through cost chosen by a firm is critical to
strategies leadership, differentiation, or choosing IS to complement the
focus strategy
Dynamic Speed, agility, and aggressive IS are critical to achieving the
environment moves and countermoves by a speed needed for moves and
strategies firm create competitive countermoves.
advantage IS are in a constant state of flux
or development

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 Building a Social Business Strategy
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• A plan of how the firm will use social IT, aligned with organization
strategy and IS strategy
• A vision of how the business would operate if it seamlessly and
thoroughly incorporated social and collaborative capabilities
throughout the business model
• Answers the same type of questions of what, how, and who, as any
other business strategy

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 Social Business Strategies
• Collaboration
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

o Using social IT to extend the reach of stakeholders, both employees and

those outside the enterprise walls.
o Social networks enable individuals to find and connect with each other to
share ideas, information, and expertise.
• Engagement
o Using social IT to involve stakeholders in the traditional business of the
enterprise.
o Communities and blogs provide a platform for individuals to join in
conversations, create new conversations, offer support to each other, and
other activities that create a deeper feeling of connection to the company,
brand, or enterprise
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 Social Business Strategies (Cont.)
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Innovation
o Using social IT to identify, describe, prioritize, and create new
ideas for the enterprise
o Social IT offer the community members a “super idea box” where
individuals suggest new ideas, comment on other ideas, and vote
for their favorite idea, giving managers a new way to generate and
decide on products and services

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 Applications of Social IT
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• National Instruments (ni.com) has embraced social IT and created a

social business strategy
• Managers developed a branded community consisting of a number
of social IT tools like Facebook®, Twitter®, blogs, forums, and more
• Thinking holistically about all of the ways customers and employees
might interact with each other, the branded community has become
the hub of collaboration, engagement and idea generation

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 Brief Overview of Organizational
Strategies
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• Organizational strategy includes the organization’s design as well as

the choices it makes to define, set up, coordinate, and control its work
processes
• A plan that answers the question:
o “How will the company organize to achieve its goals and implement its business
strategy?”

• There are numerous models of organizational strategy

• The business diamond introduced by Harold Leavitt, identifies the
crucial components of an organization’s plan as its information/control,
people, structure, and tasks.

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 Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

Figure 1.5 The Business Diamond

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 The Managerial Levers
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• This framework (Figure 1.6) suggests that the successful execution of a business’s
organizational strategy comprises the best combination of organizational, control,
and cultural variables
• Organizational variables include:
o Decision rights, business processes, formal reporting relationships, and informal
networks
• Control variables include:
o availability of data, nature and quality of planning, effectiveness of performance
measurement and evaluation systems, and incentives to do good work
• Cultural variables comprise the values of the organization

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 Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

Figure 1.8 Managerial levers

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 Assessing the organization’s Use of IS
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

To understand organizational strategy we must answer the following

questions:
1. What are the important structures and reporting relationships within
the organization?
2. Who holds the decision rights to critical decisions?
3. What are the important people-based networks (social and
informational) and how can we use them to get work done better ?
4. What are the characteristics, experiences, and skill levels of the
people within the organization?

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 Assessing the organization’s Use of IS
(Cont.)
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

5. What are the key business processes?

6. What control systems (management and measurement systems) are in
place?
7. What are the culture, values, and beliefs of the organization?

The answers to these questions inform the assessment of the

organization’s use of IS

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 FIGURE 1.7: Summary of organizational strategy frameworks.

Framework Key Idea Usefulness in IS Discussions

Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

Business There are four key components Using IS in an organization will

diamond to an organization’s design: affect each of these components.
people, structure, tasks, and Use this framework to identify
information/control where these impacts are likely to
occur
Managerial Organizational variables, This is a more detailed model than
levers control variables, and cultural the Business diamond and gives
variables are the levers specific areas where IS can be used
managers can use to affect to manage the organization and to
change in their organization change the organization

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 Brief Overview of IS Strategy
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

• IS strategy is the plan an organization uses to provide information

services.
• IS allows a company to implement its business strategy
• Business strategy is a function of
o Competition (What does the customer want and what does the
competition do?)
o Positioning (In what way does the firm want to compete?)
o Capabilities (What can the firm do?). IS help determine the company’s
capabilities.

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 FIGURE 1.8: IS strategy matrix.

What Who Where

Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

Hardware List of physical components of Individuals who use it Physical location

the system Individuals who manage
it
Software List of programs, applications, Individuals who use it
What hardware it
and utilities Individuals who manage
resides upon and
it where that hardware
is located
Networking Diagram of how hardware and Individuals who use it/ Where the nodes are
software components are Individuals who manage located, where the
connected it/Company service wires and other
obtained from transport media are
located
Data Bits of information stored in Individuals who use it Where the
the system Individuals who information resides
manage it

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 Chapter 1 - Key Terms
Business diamond (p. 34) - identifies the crucial components of an
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

organization’s plan as its information/control, people, structure, and

tasks
Business strategy (p. 27) - a plan articulating where a business seeks
To go and how it expects to get there.
Collaboration (p. 33) - using social IT to extend the reach of
stakeholders, Both employees and those outside the enterprise walls.
Cost leadership (p. 28) - when the organization aims to be the lowest
cost producer in the marketplace.
Differentiation (p. 29) – used by organization to qualify its product
Or service in a way that allows it to appear unique in the marketplace

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 Chapter 1 - Key Terms - (Cont.)
Engagement (p. 33) - using social IT to involve stakeholders in the
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

traditional business of the enterprise.

Focus (p. 29) - allows an organization to limit its scope to a narrower
segment of the market and tailor its offerings to that group of
customers.
Hypercompetition (p. 31) - the speed and aggressiveness of the
Moves and countermoves in any given market create an environment in
Which advantages are rapidly created and eroded.
Innovation (p. 33) - using social IT to identify, describe, prioritize,
And create new ideas for the enterprise.
IS strategy (p. 36) - the plan an organization uses to provide
Information services.

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 Chapter 1 - Key Terms - - (Cont.)
Information Systems Strategy Triangle (p. 24) – a framework that
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

Relates business strategy with IS strategy and organizational strategy.

Managerial levers (p. 35) - variables used by decision makers to effect
changes in their organizations.
Mission (p. 26) - a clear and compelling statement that unifies an
organization’s effort and describes what the firm is all about.
Organizational strategy (p. 34) - the organization’s design as well as the
choices it makes to define, set up, coordinate, and control its work
processes.
Social business strategy (p. 33) - a plan of how the firm will use social
IT, aligned with organization strategy and IS strategy.
Strategy (p. 26) - a coordinated set of actions to fulfill objectives,
purposes, and goals. The essence of a strategy is setting limits on what the
business will seek to accomplish.
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 Copyright 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Pearlson and Saunders – 5th Ed. – Chapter 1

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