Batesvile Casket Company Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Batesvile Casket Company - Essay Example They held the opinion that handling their customer’s needs was the path to success. They placed the utmost importance on customer satisfaction and consistently introduced improvement in their processes through technological innovation to provide speedy and better service to their customers. How New Technology Can Build Competitive Position The revolution in information technology is causing significant reduction in the cost of getting, processing and transmitting information. Information technology involves not just computers but encompasses the entire information that is used and created in a business, and the interlinked and convergent technologies that carry out processing of the information. The company faces a wide array of questions, namely how the technology can help them gain competitive advantage, what strategies can be used to obtain the maximum benefit of the technology and out of many options investment in which technology would yield the maximum benefit. The revol ution in information system has changed the structure of the industry and impacted competition. It has shown ways to companies to outperform their rivals; it creates the opportunity for businesses to realize the scope of new businesses from their existing ones (Porter & Miller, 1985). The implementation of new technology helps an organization to achieve competitive advantage over their competitors. James J. Kuisel, the MIS Director of Batesville Casket Company believed that the implementation of new technology would help them to gain leadership in the market. They were able to achieve remarkable cost reduction through the use of client/server network at the PC of the customer service center rather than the mainframe computer. The data was transferred from the client server to the mainframe. They were the pioneers in adopting a new PC development tool known as Knowledge-Man in the 1980s which helped them to reduce the cycle time. It was implemented by them faster than their competito rs. The MIS and the logistics department worked in conjunction and were able to reduce paperwork and thus serve customers faster. They did this at a time when competitors were still using paper based system. Initially, in 1990 the hardware that was used for customer service center was an early IBM PC. The system was obsolete and needed to be replaced. The software was required to be upgraded to the latest version of Knowledge –Man. The logistic department expected upgrade of the distribution and manufacturing system. Bar coding of the model number of each casket helped in automated tracking and identification of caskets. A bar code reader was placed at the loading dock of the customer service center that was connected via radio frequency link to the PC of the customer service center. A system for maintaining records of orders, maintaining inventory based on model number was established to serve customers better. Batesville continuously upgraded their technology to provide bet ter service to customers. They replaced their hardware, decided on operating systems and revised their software. They introduced IBM PS/2 Model A16 which had a memory of 4 megabytes, colored monitor, math coprocessor, mouse and hard disc of 160 megabyte. They installed Epson LQ1170 and Hayes 9600 Ultra external modem.