Chapter List

David Targett

In broad terms the chapters in this part ask the following questions. Have IS affected the competitive and business situation of the organization? If so, what has been the nature of the impact - how has competitiveness changed? - how has business been changed? Four of the chapters in this part are case studies of private sector companies, covering a wide range of industries - food retailing, glass manufacturing, housing management and newspaper retailing. A fifth chapter is a case study on the operations of the UK government's Department of Health. Standard theoretical concepts, for example Porter's Five Forces framework, are used to analyse the impact of IS. The final chapter looks at the music industry. It is issue-based, examining the link between IS and time-based competition.

Perhaps the most striking case is that of Pinnacle Housing a company that has used IS in an innovative way to create a new national business in an area - the management of rented properties - which has previously been localized. The chapter describes the beginnings of an attempt to transform a business and gain competitive advantage.

Like Pinnacle Housing, Demaglass operates in an industry which is not known as a major user of IT. Like Pinnacle, Demaglass has an adventurous strategy to deploy IS in new...