Vermont Teddy Bear Essay

1. Investing in IT plays a significant role in facilitating strategic change in organizational structure, people, tasks and processes.

The most important thing a company must do to gain IT competitive advantage in terms of technology is to develop long-term IT renewal plan aligning with corporate strategy (Feld and Stoddard, 2004). In the case of Vermont Teddy Bear, the company can develop two different SCM (supply chain management) systems, one for Calyx Flowers and one for both Teddy Bears and PajamaGrams, in order to improve operational capabilities and efficient procurement.

The most important thing a company must do to gain IT competitive advantage in terms of people’s norms and skill is to build an IT staff team with knowledge capabilities to integrate IT strategic expansion (Yetton, Henningsson,and Bjørn-Andersen, 2013). In the case of Unity Bank, when Unity Bank acquired Delta, both companies need to utilize the global experiences of Unity Bank’s IT employees with the local expertise of the US market of Delta’s IT staff for a successful growth-by-acquisition strategy.

An example from Telestroke case is that instead of using the DICOM standard, CT brain scans would be initially sent to Telestroke center and then to MGH main server for data record, in order to reduce delays in patient treatment.

In making IT a competitive advantage, a company needs to develop a scalable IT platform, align long-term IT strategy with business processes and organizational culture, and build a high functioning team for successful