Company\'s Competitive Strategy and Value

¶ … company's competitive strategy and value model. Explain how information systems and technology are used to create strategic advantage.

Comments on the Answers Provided

The answer to this section does not specifically answer the question as to what the primary competitive strategy is for Imperial Tobacco. Maybe it is differentiation but it the answer does not have a logical flow of was supposed to make this point stand out without getting embedded in the entire write up.

I also wanted the question to answer the question as to which of the three business models Chain, Shop or Network that Imperial Tobacco uses.

The Porter's Five Forces was interesting but it did not answer which value model applied.

Finally, it is hard to pick out how it created strategic advantage for Imperial Tobacco based on the answer provided for this section.

Primary Competitive Strategy

The primary competitive strategy for Imperial Tobacco relies on a Chain Value Configuration Model as core to the company's business is the transformation of raw materials into products. Critical process areas that are core to the company's business model are its inbound logistics, Operations, Outbound Logistics, Marketing and Service. As a result of these many integration points throughout their value chain, Imperial Tobacco needs to evaluate it technologies for the standpoint of their ability to create greater levels of collaboration across its many activities, ranging from Inbound logistics through Service. As Scale and Capacity Utilization are the key cost drivers of the Chain Value Configuration Model, it is also essential for Imperial Tobacco to include a series of analytics applications to measure the performance of the company in this interlinked chain business model.

Based on the Chain value configuration of the Value Chain Model as defined by Porter (1985), Imperial Tobacco's existing supply chain processes, from the coordination with tobacco growers and providers through the development of curing and packaging requirements, the company needs to nurture and enable greater levels of collaboration across its supply chain and into its manufacturing locations in order to achieve higher levels of efficiency and production, These processes that have interlinked the company's operations have continued to be improved over time, through continual effort to improve them through manually-oriented means. Automating these supply chain, quality management, curing and packaging processes however will increase the overall efficiency of the company while also reducing costs. This will be achieved by selectively applying software applications in the form of collaborative work platforms that will provide each department and opportunity to coordinate and work more effectively with the other. There is also the opportunity for each member of the Imperial Tobacco value chain to see how the entire operation is running.

The competitive strategy of Imperial Tobacco has two facets. The first is the internal efficiency that is necessary for the company to succeed. This internal efficiency needs to focus on how to make the value chain as cost- and time-efficient as possible. Imperial Tobacco also must work to alleviate wasted steps in their value chain to stay competitive globally and also support globalization efforts as well. The more lean and agile their supply chain is, the quicker they will be able to respond to external opportunities and threats while staying profitable and able to execute on their core business. The second facet of their competitive strategy is externally focused on their distribution channels, trading partners, retailers and customers. Their chain-based configuration of their value chain needs to concentrate on defining its performance so that it aligns with the expectations of these external customers, whether they are part of their distribution channel, reseller channel, or end customer.

Value Chain Model

The use of the Value Chain Model (Porter, 1985) is pervasive in explaining how the many contributory factors of any business all lead to the generating of gross margins and the ability to synchronize the many diverse departments to a common goal. Figure 1 illustrates the value chain as defined by Porter (1985).

Figure 1: Value Chain