Chief information officer (CIO) – Oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and objectives
Chief knowledge officer (CKO) - Responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing the organization’s knowledge
Chief privacy officer (CPO) – Responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information
Chief security officer (CSO) – Responsible for ensuring the safety of IT resources including data, hardware, software, and people
Chief technology officer (CTO) – Responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of IT
The Gap Between Business Personnel and IS Personnel
Business personnel possess expertise in functional areas such as marketing, accounting, and sales.
IS personnel have the technological expertise.
This typically causes a communications gap between the business personnel and IS personnel.
Identifying Competitive Advantage
To survive and thrive an organization must create a competitive advantage
Competitive advantage – a product or service that an organization’s customers place a greater value on than similar offerings from a competitor
First-mover advantage – occurs when an organization can significantly impact its market share by being first to market with a competitive advantage
Organizations watch their competition through environmental scanning
Environmental scanning – the acquisition and analysis of events and trends in the environment external to an organization
Three common tools used in industry to analyze and develop competitive advantages include:
Porter’s Five Forces Model
Porter’s three generic strategies
Value chains
Michael Porter’s Five Forced Model: The Five Forces Model determines the relative attractiveness of an industry
Buyer power – The ability of buyers to affect the price of an item
Switching cost – Manipulating costs that make customers reluctant to switch to another