7.6: Summary

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Page ID: 9792

Ly-Huong T. Pham, Tejal Desai-Naik, Laurie Hammond, & Wael Abdeljabbar
ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)

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Summary

Information systems can and have been used strategically for competitive advantage by many US companies, including Walmart, Amazon, Netflix, and Apple. Acquiring a competitive advantage is hard, and sustaining it can be just as difficult because of technology's innovative nature. Organizations that want to gain a market edge must understand how they want to differentiate themselves and then use all the elements of information systems (hardware, software, data, people, and process) to accomplish that differentiation.

IT is not a panacea; just purchasing and installing the latest technology will not, by itself, make a company more successful. Instead, the combination of the right technologies, employee training, infrastructure, and good management, together, will give a company the best chance of a positive result.