Porter's Five Forces Model

The original business strategy, which is still not fully implemented or thought out, is still intact and being somewhat utilized. Part of getting from where we are now to where we want to go, is to put together a comprehensive business and growth strategy plan that, brings about the most results. The original business strategy resembled that of a small business that had the most growth with the least risk. With little risk also means little or no technology. The company has changed, the competition is more intense and the economy is weakened. A new strategy that aligns with technology is essential in order to be successful. As business and technology have become increasingly intertwined, the strategic alignment of the two has emerged as a major corporate issue. With the emergence of IT from the back room to the forefront of business brings the alignment issue under the spotlight like never before. And as

Choose a specific industry (e.g., grocery retailing, the airline industry, etc.), and apply Porter 's Five Forces Model to discuss that industry 's competitive forces and their relative influence.

Porter’s Five Forces was developed in 1979 by Michael Porter as a framework to assess and evaluate the competitive position of a company in an industry. It is based on the theory that there are five forces which identify the attractiveness and competitive strength of an industry. It is helpful to gain an understanding of a firm’s current positon and the position that the firm may look to capture in the future. Porter’s five forces are also used to

The same principles are followed in other types of organizations that is focusing only on core competencies and offloading other tasks for suppliers. IT organizations can help their parent company by emphasizing only on core competencies. Since, technology has become highly complex and broad therefore it needs number of specialties. Advancements are made to the technology every day and the one who comes up with the consumers' demands rules the market. Therefore, in such scenario, the IT Company must identify its core competencies and polish them as smoothly that it outperforms competitors.

IT by itself does not provide any value, however, the alignment of IT to strategic, operational, and cultural objectives provides business value. Thus, the CIO must ensure that any new investment in IT is for the sake of business objectives and not for “IT for ITs sake”. Ensuring business alignment against IT project delivery is critical, must be undertaken for any investment and is the key component of IT value.

The “IT alignment trap” occurs when IT spending is highly aligned with business strategic objectives, but IT is not effective in achieving those goals. IT and business priorities must be tightly linked. This means IT spending must be matched to growth strategies for the organization as a whole. Effective management of IT initiatives occurs when there is shared ownership and governance of IT projects. To avoid the “IT alignment trap”, IT needs to be both highly aligned with overall business strategic objectives and highly effective at helping achieve those goals.

“It’s getting much harder to achieve a competitive advantage through an IT investment, but it is getting much easier to put your business at a cost disadvantage”.

Alignment of an enterprise’s goals with its IT1 and IS1 systems has been a challenge ever since IT became a business enabler. Proposing an IT alignment requires a thorough understanding of the business goals of the enterprise and the knowledge that alignment is an iterative process which requires constant measurement and honing (Chan, 2002). Enterprises often face the problem of balance of priorities between IT and Business objectives. This report deals with one such case that faced alignment and prioritization hardships resulting in an unclear approach to achieve a corporate strategy.

One of the most well-known frameworks for analyzing competitiveness is Porter’s competitive forces model. According to Porter a company must confront at least five competitive forces in the business environment. The five forces are generalized as follows:

The purpose of the article is to establish that an IT strategy focused on maintain a cutting edge technology position is the most effective way to support any kind of overall business strategy. Not only will this article address this issue, but it will also display that a cutting edge is needed to gain and maintain a prominent position in any prospective market. It should be noted that when this article speaks of “cutting edge” of technology this is actually speaking of alignment of the organization’s business and IT strategy. With this being said why then are many organizations not aligning their business and IT strategy together? This report will view why this remains a problem. Additionally, this document will

Porter’s Five Forces Model is one of the most used tools to analyze an industry and help to develop a business strategy. Michael E Porter introduced the model in 1979, and published by Harvard Business Review under the name “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy”. The model uses five forces that have been identified to categorize an industry as intensely competitive or not competitive at all and this will then determine the attractiveness of the market. An attractive industry with high profits will have high barriers to entry, weak supplier and buyer bargaining power, few substitute products and low competition. An unattractive industry will have the mirror image. Usually there are not these two outcomes of a porters five forces analysis.

International Business Machines (IBM) is an intercontinental Computer Technology and Information Technology (IT) counseling company headquartered in Armonk, New York, the United States. IBM has an extensive and assorted portfolio of services and products. Expanding on its accomplishment in the 1960s, IBM sets its position as the IT industry and the business world (IBM, 2008). Jordan (2008) state, these offerings fall into classes of cloud computing, data and analytics, commerce, the internet of things, IT infrastructure, cognitive computing, mobile and security. In this paper, generic competitive strategies theory of Porter and strategic positioning of IBM US in 1992 relation to theory will be discussed.

Successful use of the Porter Model Analysis includes identifying the sources of competition, the strength and likelihood of that competition existing, and strategic recommendations for the action a company should take to develop barriers to the various forms of competition (Prahalad and Gary, 1990). With the realization about intensity and power of competitive forces, organizations can develop options to influence them in a way that improves their own competitive position. The result could be a new strategic option, e.g. a new positioning; differentiation for competitive products of strategic partnerships.

General Motors has several internal and external influences that are challenging them to reduce their operating costs and become more efficient. In doing an analysis of the General Motors using Porter 's Competitive Model these influences become clear and opportunities for the company to reduce costs and increase efficiency using information systems becomes obvious. Porter 's Competitive Model is a model used to describe the interaction of external influences; specifically threats and opportunities that affect an organizations strategy and ability to compete [Laudon & Laudon, 2005, p. 103].

Organizations decide on a business strategy, and then build a technology system to support it. This model is too traditional for the rapid movement of today’s businesses. I agree that businesses in the world today move at a very fast pace, and a new processes should be developed where IT leaders do not have to wait for the business strategy to be completed before building an IT strategy. “To move beyond business-IT alignment, you must drive innovation and boost business-partner relationships” (Leaver, S. IT-Business Alignment a Thing of the Past: It’s time for CIOs to embrace an integrated, evolving strategy).