Club_It

Club IT July 25, 2010 University of Phoenix Information technology is one of the key methods that can allow an organization to gain competitive advantage in their industry. According to Rainer and Turban (2008), “competitive advantage is when an organization seeks to outperform its competitors in some measure such as cost, quality, or speed.” Organizations are clearly going to use competitive advantage as a selling point in their marketing as well as business strategy. In order to illustrate how competitive advantage can be gained through the application of information technology Club IT will be used as a case study. Club IT was started after Ruben Keys and Lisa Tejada worked their way through college by working as musicians. Once they both completed their degrees in Business Administration in 2000, they believed that Club IT was going to allow them to apply the knowledge that they gained while working their way through school. The mission statement for Club IT is as follows: “We, Ruben and Lisa, offer you live music, DJ’s, dance space and refreshments that suit your lifestyle. You are our friends, and we seek to build a community that meets regularly at Club IT.” (Rainer & Turban, 2008). Club IT’s primary clientele is young, musically inclined students. Information technology is especially important when dealing with youthful customers as they are more inclined to use the internet and social networking to pick and choose where they take their business. The information resources are somewhat limited at Club IT as the owners have worked really hard to renovate their space to provide a fun, exciting atmosphere. Currently, there are basic computing equipment, inventory reports, inventory spreadsheets, and a website with an intranet portal for employees. The IT manager will also be an information resource as that individual would have the most technical knowledge in the organization. What options are available for Club IT to allow them to take competitive advantage with their current information resources' There are five primary strategies for competitive advantage: cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy, innovation strategy, operational effectiveness strategy, and customer-orientation strategy (Rainer & Turban, 2008). The entertainment industry is often a make or break business and the customer-orientation strategy will be the most effective way to utilize their available resources given their primary clientele. Creating an environment that caters to young college students means that technology needs to be used to convince them to come to Club IT instead of a competitor. First, Club IT needs to create profiles for the most popular online social networking sites. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are basically free advertisings that are easy to maintain as well as have the capability to update news quickly. Customers that decide to join the group can be easily informed of special events as well as being a great place to hold promotional activities such as prize drawings and contests. Many people have these networking sites tied into their cell phones and an opportunity for customer-orientation has opened up. The student gets out of class and is wondering where to go for the evening and before the thought is finished, they have a notification from Club IT with the evenings drink specials and musical talent. Club IT was able to send specific information to a specific group of people, which is the basic idea of customer-orientation. To make the message even more specific, techniques can be employed to screen patrons taste in music by analyzing which songs were played the most during a given period of time. The music schedule is up on the website and the club can easily expect a particular demographic for each night. Using prizes as an incentive to complete surveys and quick questionnaires can be an effective way to understand what the customers think of Club IT and how the level of service is in their opinion. Gathering the data will offer Club IT an additional opportunity to fine tune their customer experience. When the club has all of the amenities expected of their demographic, they will have finally gained competitive advantage. Information technology is not about having a computer on hand to create documents and cruise websites. Information technology exists to help businesses complete tasks in a quick and efficient manner that directly affects the business. Increasing efficiency, lowering costs, reaching more customers, and improved profits can all be realized when a business makes the decision to invest in their information system. Club IT has the necessary renovations on the side of the business that everyone sees, but they must make changes to their information system to improve the side of the business that affects the owners and employees the most. Bibliography Rainer, R. K., & Turban, E. (2008). Introduction to Information Systems. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.