How can casinos use ICT for a competitive advantage?
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The information revolution is sweeping through our economy. No company can escape its effects. Dramatic reductions in the cost of obtaining, processing, and transmitting information are changing the way we do business.
Most general managers know that the revolution is under way, and few dispute its importance. As more and more of their time and investment capital is absorbed in information technology and its effects, executives have a growing awareness that the technology can no longer be the exclusive territory of EDP or IS departments. As they see their rivals use information for competitive advantage, these executives recognize the need to become directly involved in the management of the new technology. In the face of rapid change, however, they don’t know how.
This article aims to help general managers respond to the challenges of the information revolution. How will advances in information technology affect competition and the sources of competitive advantage? What strategies should a company pursue to exploit the technology? What are the implications of actions that competitors may already have taken? Of the many opportunities for investment in information technology, which are the most urgent?
To answer these questions, managers must first understand that information technology is more than just computers. Today, information technology must be conceived of broadly to encompass the information that businesses create and use as well as a wide spectrum of increasingly convergent and linked technologies that process the information. In addition to computers, then, data recognition equipment, communications technologies, factory automation, and other hardware and services are involved.
The information revolution is affecting competition in three vital ways:
It changes industry structure and, in so doing, alters the rules of competition.
It creates competitive advantage by giving companies new ways to outperform their rivals.
It spawns whole new businesses, often from within a company’s existing operations.
We discuss the reasons why information technology has acquired strategic significance and how it is affecting all businesses. We then describe how the new technology changes the nature of competition and how astute companies have exploited this. Finally, we outline a proceduremanagers can use to assess the role of information technology in their business and to help define investment priorities to turn the technology to their competitive advantage.