Four examples of use of IS/IT for innovation

The report is based on analyzing that the organizations are applied of strategic use of IS/IT to achieve IS/IT enabled innovation. The information applications are growing faster for past decades. The selected industry for this report is software industry. The business organizations are emphasized on the IT applications to gain of competitive advantage. The present study demonstrates that IT is increasing a competitive advantage when it is acted with the human resources (Christensen, Raynor and McDonald 2015). This paper is analyzed and reviewed how the IT applications are used to provide the IT Company with a strategic advantage over worldwide marketplace competitive forces. The role of information system in organization encompasses use of IT to develop of products, services along with capabilities that provide the company with strategic advantages over global marketplace. IS/IT is enabled to support the competitive position of organization along with gain of business advantages for the companies. IS/IT applications are effective along with efficient to convert plus share of knowledge management system that effect the organizational management and manage members of the organization.

The report is based on reviewing the use of IS/IT for the innovation of the IT organizations. It highlighted success factors and lessons learned from the examples of IS/IT innovation into the organization. It is also discussing the impact of internal factors such as organizational, management as well as individual factors. The external factors are also analyzed in this case such as market, industry, social, economic, technological as well as political factors on success of IS/IT enabled innovation. Recommendations are also provided in this paper to help the organization succeed in efforts to embark on use of IS/IT for the innovation of organization. 

Orzen and Bell (2016) stated that innovation is different activity. Incremental innovation is common form of the innovation. It is utilized with existing technology as well as increased in value to the customers such as features and change in design in existing market. Jarzabkowski and Kaplan (2015) argued that small updates to the user experiences can add value to the customer. Innovation covers introduction of new good and quality of the products, introduction of new methods for the production along with opening of new market, conquest of the new sources of supply and establishment of new organization in the industry (Stark 2015).  Following are four examples of use of IS/IT for innovation in different software industries such as:

Xero: The Company wins best service innovation for its Xero Learn. The company has considered development process which led to the educational platform, Xero Learn which is an example of initiative towards the accounting information system. It builds support to the next generation of the bookkeepers as well as accountants, which provides hand on learning experiences into the educational environments (Tarhini, Al-Dmour and Obeidat 2015). The product innovation is introduction of good as well as service which is new and has improved characteristics and intended uses.

WiseTech Global: This Company provides cloud based software solutions for both international as well as domestic logistics industry. The company innovates in the Australia market by implementation of container freight station management system that can able to handle import as well as export of container needs. It provides end-to-end integration for the simplified shipments. It is included with significant changes in the production and delivery methods, and software (Gold 2016). The process innovation can decrease unit cost of production and delivery, increase in quality, produce and deliver new and improved products.

Success factors and lesson learned

Atlassian: The Company has innovation its business operations by implementation of confluence knowledge management system which can create idea sharing as well as innovation by providing the team with power to create, share as well as manage the content. This information system helps the company towards central repository for the knowledge (Nagle and Muller 2017). This system can store as well as retrieve the knowledge, improve the collaboration, locate the knowledge, capture and use knowledge which enhances the process of knowledge management.

3P Learning: The organization transforms its business digitally for increasing opportunities for the students so that they can connect with the customers towards information. It is a mid way through the transformation. It can streamline as well as manage the sale processes on Salesforce. By connection of sales along with services, it can start to analyze the response times as well as usage of the products. Salesforce community cloud can allow the partners to leverage sales as well as its service processes to develop the online education network (Lusch and Nambisan 2015). Salesforce Einstein is a 3P learning transformation agenda which is used of automated decisions will disrupt how the business is getting done and resulting in surge of the business efficiency. Therefore, the organization can transform its customer business; connect the customers towards the information in faster way.

Each of the organization is successful in long term requires an innovation management system that can innovate to enhance the business operations. In the retail industry, innovation is required to raise the productivity along with profitability of the company. The innovation management shapes structure as well as framework conditions such that innovation can identified, ideas can generate and implement (Jarzabkowski and Kaplan 2015). The success factors of innovation into the retail industry are based on:

Management commitment: Success of the innovation management is based on commitment of the organizational management in the business functions. Responsibilities and budget is a framework conditions which are defined. If the management support is not provided, then the leader can waste time to fight against the windmills (Wu, Straub and Liang 2015). Commitment of the management team from top to bottom is a basis of the innovation process. Management support is required for innovations as it happens outside of the day-to-day operations of the business.

Search fields: The search field is strategic subject areas on basis of the markets and product fields or technologies where the company can want to make improvement (Chang 2016). It is identified by use of strategic tools such as trend and technology along with market analysis.

Innovation culture: Innovation is required to various structure as well as culture as compared to operative management along with work. The operational business is built on the business efficiency while innovation is always about the business innovation. The employees of organization are raised of innovation throughout communication measurement (Adams et al. 2016). The employees are motivated towards innovation by incentives for promotion of innovation. Training is required for creativity along with innovation processes.

Change management: Introducing of innovation management is required change as well as implementing of innovation for possible changes. The changes are effective as it supports by the employees and workforce is activity changed (Coltman et al. 2015). Change management is a success factor for the organization as it is belonged to range of the innovation manager.

Integration of employees: The success factor of innovation is aware and raise measures to inspire along with motivate the employees for innovation, but it is structural measures for active involvement like pitching of contests.

The lesson are learnt from success of IS/IT innovation. At first it is learnt that innovation is successful introduction of new idea to marketplace. It is required to use of innovative idea to increase sales, improve the customer services as well as maintain a position in the market. The current trends as well as feedback are considered by the innovative leaders. Each of the software business organization can begin their journey with ad hoc innovation which is influenced by task as well as timeframe (Laudon and Laudon 2016). Ad hoc is an approach towards innovation. It is learned that innovation comes from collaboration and teamwork and encourage the innovation with the team member. Therefore, innovation is lead to shift the focus as well as view of people.

Impacts of internal factors and external factors on success of IS/IT enabled innovation 

The impacts of internal factors on success of IS/IT enable innovations are:

Organizational factors: The organizational factors which can impact success of IS/IT innovation in the software industries are support from the top management, structure of decision making, management style and allocation of resources. Support from the top management is involved with participation of executive and top level management of organization within IS/IT activities. Lack of support of top management inhibited strategic use of the IS/IT (Elmes and Barry 2017). Decision making structure is type of control and delegation of decision making throughout the organization and extent of participation by the organizational members towards IS/IT.

Individual factors: The factors are user acceptance of the innovation, social network, and demographic factors of the individuals. Sometimes, it is possible that the individual are not accepting the innovation of information system within the organization, therefore it can provide a huge influence on success factor to innovate the system. There are poor social network to make a relationship with the employees and management team (Pisano 2015). The demographic factors such as age and gender of the individuals are not meeting with the implementation of system requirements.

Management factors: The success of the IS/IT innovation is based on the IT leader perspective. Therefore, success and failure of the technological innovation is based on support from the top management level as they can motivate the employees to make possible changes in implementation of information system (Coombs 2015).

Market factors: The marketing strategies used for competition the companies provide an influence on the business entities to alter the market structure. It has ability to interfere with acquisition of required physical resources (Grant 2016). The customer behavior has strong influence on demand for the innovation that is triggered by development of innovative relations.

Industry factors: The industry level factors are research and development intensity, turbulence, uncertainty and adoption of open innovation (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). Those factors can influence as in innovation of information system, research and development of new way to innovative in the market can provide a huge influence.

Social factors: There are poor relationships among the management team and employees, so that it can affect the implementation work of the information system (Keyes 2016). When there is lack of social network among the team, so that they are not able to communicate and interact with the staffs. Therefore, the staffs are not motivated with adoption of the information system.

Economic factors: The economic factors are that profit is considered as drive force of the production in the market. There is high price and high maintenance work for implementation of information system in the organization, therefore when innovative method is not used for innovation, and then it will hamper the success of the organization (Chenhall and Moers 2015). The nature of competition is faced by organization and its services along with financial resources available in the economy.

Technological factors: Network, connection as well as information system enables that it can share of resources among the acceptance of IS/IT which is one of the critical factor to achieve the organization vision and mission (Wu, Straub and Liang 2015).

Political/policy factors: The organization is not implemented of strict organizational policies so that the employees are not able to follow the organizational rules and regulations regards to innovation work. The political factors such as government policies, administrative practices are greater impact on the economic development of organization (Lusch and Nambisan 2015). It can also affect the performance of the organization.

Following are recommendations which are suggested to help organization in succeed efforts to embark on use of IS/IT for innovation such as:

Implementation of business strategies for innovation and development: The organization should implement of new revenue opportunities, optimization of existing channels and generation of higher profits. It provides the company with an advantage over the competitors. The organization should focus on revenue model innovation when increasing business profit is main driver for innovation in IS/IT.

Use of artificial intelligence in business: The organization should use of artificial intelligence when it comes to the business innovation. Artificial intelligence (AI) can help by detecting as well as reacting to the customer emotions. The artificial intelligence is formulated own decisions without the human input and applied of AI to solve the business problems and human behave. AI can explore growing usage of the artificial intelligence into the business landscape. It is seen how AI can influence expansion as well as implementation of the business strategy mainly in the software industries in order to create a high business value.

Meet the customer requirements: The first priority of the organization is meeting with the customer’s requirements. The needs of customers are changed constantly. The innovators are predicted to change in market and provide solutions before it realizes that they require. The business organization should also require meeting with long term basis of the customer’s requirements to innovative in the market. The organization has customer insights and decision making benefits that come with them.

Technology innovation: The organization should implement of process where they can embark the importance of technology as critical success factor among the staffs for increasing market competitiveness. The business organization should develop new and innovative services in market and fulfill undressed requirements and solve the problems which were not in past. The technological innovation is based on technological aspects of the product and service which can cover entire organizational business model. Therefore, innovation is not driven by the technology. This type of innovation is reflects on business consideration to improve the business value by working with the technological aspects of the products and services.   

Conclusion

It is concluded that emergence of the innovation models and implementation of information system in the industry undergoes the IS/IT transformation methods. The internal factors within the IT innovations reveal challenges that the organizations are facing in decision processes. The industry related external factors are constitutive for innovation management within the organization. It can determine if the organization rethinks about innovation management. The external factors determine how the company can implement of innovation models. The model affects management, decision making processes, culture plus communication among the innovation management of software organization. Both internal along with external knowledge are required to connect, manage and implement in information system of the company. The innovation culture along with facilitation of knowledge communities are required conditions for effective knowledge management. It is included management for basic situations supports accumulation of the knowledge and information, communication along with learning process which can increase innovativeness of the organizations. IS/IT innovation is involved to use of technology for creating an effective organization and modify alignment among the technological initiatives as well as business goals. While innovation is goal of the organization, therefore the IT leaders can define about the technological innovation. It is recommended to the organization to use of artificial intelligence for solving the business problems and human behave and innovate more in the technological platform.

References

Adams, R., Jeanrenaud, S., Bessant, J., Denyer, D. and Overy, P., 2016. Sustainability?oriented innovation: a systematic review. International Journal of Management Reviews, 18(2), pp.180-205.

Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. Auerbach Publications.

Chenhall, R.H. and Moers, F., 2015. The role of innovation in the evolution of management accounting and its integration into management control. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 47, pp.1-13.

Christensen, C.M., Raynor, M.E. and McDonald, R., 2015. What is disruptive innovation. Harvard Business Review, 93(12), pp.44-53.

Coltman, T., Tallon, P., Sharma, R. and Queiroz, M., 2015. Strategic IT alignment: twenty-five years on.

Coombs, C.R., 2015. When planned IS/IT project benefits are not realized: a study of inhibitors and facilitators to benefits realization. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.363-379.

Elmes, M. and Barry, D., 2017. Strategy retold: Toward a narrative view of strategic discourse. In The Aesthetic Turn in Management (pp. 39-62). Routledge.

Gold, M.V., 2016. Sustainable Agriculture: The Basics (p. 1). CRC Press.

Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Jarzabkowski, P. and Kaplan, S., 2015. Strategy tools?in?use: A framework for understanding “technologies of rationality” in practice. Strategic Management Journal, 36(4), pp.537-558.

Keyes, J., 2016. Implementing the IT balanced scorecard: Aligning IT with corporate strategy. Auerbach Publications.

Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education India.

Lusch, R.F. and Nambisan, S., 2015. Service innovation: A service-dominant logic perspective. MIS quarterly, 39(1).

Nagle, T.T. and Müller, G., 2017. The strategy and tactics of pricing: A guide to growing more profitably. Routledge.

Orzen, M.A. and Bell, S.C., 2016. Lean IT: Enabling and sustaining your lean transformation. Productivity Press.

Pearlson, K.E., Saunders, C.S. and Galletta, D.F., 2016. Managing and Using Information Systems, Binder Ready Version: A Strategic Approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Pisano, G.P., 2015. You need an innovation strategy. Harvard Business Review, 93(6), pp.44-54.

Stark, J., 2015. Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 1) (pp. 1-29). Springer, Cham.

Tarhini, A., Al-Dmour, R.H. and Obeidat, B.Y., 2015. STRATEGIC IT-BUSINESS ALIGNMENT AS MANAGERS’EXPLORATIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE STRATEGIES. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 11(7).

Wu, S.P.J., Straub, D.W. and Liang, T.P., 2015. How information technology governance mechanisms and strategic alignment influence organizational performance: Insights from a matched survey of business and IT managers. Mis Quarterly, 39(2), pp.497-518.