MIS 302F, Spring 2011 Homework 1 Overview: In this assignment, you will complete an analysis of a company and its

s related industry. Your analysis will include an assessment of the industry structure model, business model, competitive strategy model, and process definitions based on the Value Chain Model. You must complete the above analysis for one of the following four companies: Blockbuster, American Airlines, Hewlett-Packard (HP), or Whataburger. You may pick whichever company for which you are interested, but you will need to do some independent research and study into their company to complete this assignment. You may NOT pick any other company than one of the four listed above.

Assignment Instructions: This assignment is worth up to 50 points. It is an individual assignment. Your review, assessment, analysis, and response must be your own. You will complete this assignment using the MS Word template provided on page 2. You must upload and submit your MS Word document on Blackboard BEFORE noon on Thursday, February 3. That gives you approximately one week to complete this assignment. Late assignments will not be accepted. To start on your homework, use the template on the next page. Save it as a single page and replace the help text in the template with your work. Include your name, UTeID, and section in the box provided. Name your file based on the following naming convention, LastnameFirstname-eid-HW1.docx. If I were to use this naming convention, for example, my file would be named VerduzcoDoug-dv192-HW1.docx. There is also an example of a completed assignment based on Blackboard, the company that you may use as a guide.

Blackboard Instructions: There are detailed instructions for how to upload and submit your assignment on Blackboard. Look for BB Upload Instructions under Assignments You MUST follow these instructions EXACTLY to make sure that your assignment is received. The upload feature in Blackboard has some unusual steps in it. Follow the instructions document exactly so you do NOT risk your grade on this assignment. Mac Users: On the advice from UTs technical support department, do NOT use the Safari browser to upload your assignment. You should use Firefox available with this link.

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MIS 302F, Spring 2011 Homework 1

Company: Business Model:

Name: UTeID: Section:

List the one company that you chose to analyze of the options that were offered. Explain the business model for all of the ways in which this company makes money

Industry Structure Model Rivals: List at least two other actual companies or products that are direct competitors Substitutes: List at least two other actual companies or products that offer substitutes Customers: Define the demographic of the companys main target customers Competitive Strategy Model Define and explain the competitive strategy for your company, including: Does your company follow a cost or differentiation strategy? Does your company follow a focus or enterprise-wide strategy? What products and/or services does your company offer?

Competitive Strategy Recommendation Based on everything in the above sections, what is a possible competitive strategy that your company should consider to improve its business (e.g., new product/service, new market, etc.). Explain your justification for the above strategy List one SMART goal that would demonstrate successful completion of your competitive strategy recommendation?

Key Processes

Identify and explain the 3 main business processes that would be needed for your company to execute your competitive strategy.

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Homework 1 Example:
Company: Business Model: Blackboard Blackboards key business is to sell and lease software to mid and large-size colleges. Our main product will include features for class and student/grade management in one, integrated environment. Our software will be designed to offer the most complete set of features that would run faster and offer better features than Blackboard and offer links to social networking to provide a better sense of community for larger schools. Industry Structure Model Rivals: SMART Sync, Netop Vision6 Substitutes: GoSignMeUp, Acteva, McGraw-Hill Connect Customers: The target market for Blackboard is medium to large size colleges and universities that are either public or private. Examples include University of Texas, UCLA, and the State University of New York. We also serve the K-12 education institutions, as well as, government and military education needs. Competitive Strategy Model Our strategy will be to compete as a high-quality (i.e., differentiation) and industry-wide software provider in the prime education markets. We will lease our software product to schools on 3-5 year contracts. We expect leases to offer tiered pricing based on the number of concurrent users. The following are examples of potential pricing 1,000-5,000 users for $50,000/year, 5,001-10,000 users for $80,000/year, and 10,001+ users for $100,000/year Our product strategy is based on serving education markets with class management, student management features. We also offer many collaboration, communication, and networking tools, such as, Discussion Boards, Virtual Classrooms, Email tools with which students are already familiar but in an integrated software environment. Competitive Strategy Recommendation To enter into a new market, we need to offer custom education solutions that are specifically designed for trade schools. This may include schools that specialize, for example, in accounting, beauty, automotive, culinary, etc. Our plan is to assess the potential size of each type of trade school and build software products for the largest segments. The trade school market is large and growing. It is not currently supported by software products that are tailored to their needs. Our goal is to launch our first trade school product by the end of May 2011. Key Processes Lead Management (internal) we must be able to track potential customers to help close sales contracts. This includes the contacts, sales volume, likelihood of closing, etc. Grade Management (external) our software must make it extremely easy for faculty to post assignments and grades and notify students of current grades, upcoming assignments, etc. Registration (external) our software must support student registration classes either through our product OR by linking with existing registration systems that a p. 3 of 4

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college may already have.

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