All sources of competitive advantage are temporary and companies that fail to adapt to new technology, fickle customer preferences, or shifting competitive influences can easily lose market traction. While many companies enjoy short term bursts of high performance over their lifetime, only a few sustain momentum over the long run.
So what’s the answer? How do you sustain competitive advantage? There is no easy answer of course, but the key may be in promoting innovative use of tools throughout the organization through recognition.
In our rapidly changing global economy where market conditions, buying expectations of customers, competitive forces, new product offerings and supporting business technologies are constantly changing, executive leaders must continuously find ways to improve their company’s effectiveness and efficiency.
Organizations must ensure optimum economic performance, rapidly incorporate new systems or technologies, maximize dwindling resources, reduce fix and variable expenses, improve customer service, and strengthen the bottom line, while finding new and more innovative ways of gaining competitive advantage.
Many firms rely upon technology to give them a leg up in the market. And while it is the primary role of an information system is to collect data and sort that data into useful information, it is the users or people that convert that information into knowledge which can then be exploited into competitive advantage.
In the end competitive advantage derives not from the technology, but on how businesses (and their people) use the technology.
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