Using Pricing and Revenue Management in a Supply Chain in Practice

Evaluate your market carefully. The first step in revenue management is to identify the customer segments being served and their needs. The goal is to understand what the customer is buying, as opposed to what you are selling. If an airline thinks of itself as only selling seats, it cannot use revenue management. It

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The Role of Sustainability in a Supply Chain

This book has focused on designing and operating supply chains with a goal of growing the sup­ply chain surplus. Each supply chain, however, is only a small part of the world in which it resides. Ultimately, the health and survival of every supply chain and every individual depend on the health of the surrounding

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The Tragedy of the Commons in a Supply Chain

In an influential article, Hardin (1968) described the tragedy of the commons as a dilemma aris­ing when the common good does not align perfectly with the good of individual entities. It is useful to study his example in somewhat greater detail. Consider a pasture that is open to all herders with cattle. Each herder

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Key Pillars of Sustainability in a Supply Chain

Sustainability in a supply chain can be viewed along three pillars—social, environmental, and economic. Major global corporations such as Walmart and Starbucks report their economic per­formance in their annual reports and their social and environmental performance in their global responsibility reports (also called corporate social responsibility reports). As we mentioned ear­lier, many actions taken

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Sustainability and Supply Chain Drivers

Opportunities for improving supply chain sustainability can be identified by matching the social (workforce, customer, society) and environmental (resource reduction, emission reduction, prod­uct innovation) pillars we have described with the various supply chain drivers discussed in this text. The goal is for every firm to measure its environmental impact for each driver along each of

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Closed-Loop Supply Chains

As we discussed earlier, supply chains typically cause significant harm to the environment when their output ends up in a landfill. One of the biggest opportunities to improve sustainability is for firms to design products that use fewer resources and can be recycled and remanufactured after use. An example of a commonly remanufactured product

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The Pricing of Sustainability in a Supply Chain

For individuals and firms to focus on sustainability, it is crucial that they internalize the “mone­tary value” of the social or environmental cost of their actions. Firms are structured to naturally account for all factors that they have to pay for. Every effort is put into place to reduce these costs. For example, firms

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How Information Systems Are Transforming Business

You can see the results of this large-scale spending around you every day by observing how people conduct business. Changes in technology and new innova­tive business models have transformed social life and business practices. More than 269 million Americans have mobile phones (81 percent of the population), and 230 million of these people access

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What’s New in Management Information Systems?

Plenty. In fact, there’s a whole new world of doing business using new tech­nologies for managing and organizing. What makes the MIS field the most exciting area of study in schools of business is the continuous change in tech­nology, management, and business processes. Five changes are of paramount importance. IT Innovations. A continuing stream

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Can You Run the Company with Your iPhone?

Can you run the company just by using your iPhone? Perhaps not entirely, but there are many business functions today that can be performed using an iPhone, iPad, or Android mobile device. Smartphones and tablets have become all-in-one tools that help managers and employees work more efficiently, packing a powerful, networked computer into a

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Globalization Challenges and Opportunities: A Flattened World

In 1492, Columbus reaffirmed what astronomers were long saying: the world was round and the seas could be safely sailed. As it turned out, the world was populated by peoples and languages living in isolation from one another, with great disparities in economic and scientific development. The world trade that ensued after Columbus’s voyages

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The Emerging Digital Firm

All of the changes we have just described, coupled with equally significant orga­nizational redesign, have created the conditions for a fully digital firm. A digital firm can be defined along several dimensions. A digital firm is one in which nearly all of the organization’s significant business relationships with customers, suppliers, and employees are digitally

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Strategic Business Objectives of Information Systems

What makes information systems so essential today? Why are businesses invest­ing so much in information systems and technologies? In the United States, more than 25 million business and financial managers, and 36 million professional workers in the labor force rely on information systems to conduct business. Information systems are essential for conducting day-to-day business

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What Is an Information System?

An information system can be defined technically as a set of interrelated components that collect (or retrieve), process, store, and distribute information to support decision making and control in an organization. In addition to sup­porting decision making, coordination, and control, information systems may also help managers and workers analyze problems, visualize complex subjects, and

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Dimensions of Information Systems

To fully understand information systems, you must understand the broader orga­nization, management, and information technology dimensions of systems (see Figure 1.5) and their power to provide solutions to challenges and problems in the business environment. We refer to this broader understanding of informa­tion systems, which encompasses an understanding of the management and organizational dimensions

It Isn’t Just Technology: A Business Perspective on Information Systems

Managers and business firms invest in information technology and systems because they provide real economic value to the business. The decision to build or maintain an information system assumes that the returns on this investment will be superior to other investments in buildings, machines, or other assets. These superior returns will be expressed as

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Complementary Assets of Information Systems: Organizational Capital and the Right Business Model

Awareness of the organizational and managerial dimensions of information systems can help us understand why some firms achieve better results from their informa­tion systems than others. Studies of returns from information technology invest­ments show that there is considerable variation in the returns firms receive (see Figure 1.8). Some firms invest a great deal and

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Theoretical Approach of Information Systems

The study of information systems is a multidisciplinary field. No single theory or perspective dominates. Figure 1.9 illustrates the major disciplines that con­tribute problems, issues, and solutions in the study of information systems. In general, the field can be divided into technical and behavioral approaches. Information systems are sociotechnical systems. Though they are composed

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Did Information Systems Cause Deutsche Bank to Stumble?

Deutsche Bank AG, founded in 1870, is one of the world’s top financial companies, with 2,425 branches worldwide. It offers a range of financial products and services, including retail and commercial banking, foreign exchange, and services for mergers and acquisitions. The bank provides products for mortgages, consumer finance, credit cards, life insurance, and corporate

Business Processes and Information Systems

In order to operate, businesses must deal with many different pieces of infor­mation about suppliers, customers, employees, invoices, and payments, and of course their products and services. They must organize work activities that use this information to operate efficiently and enhance the overall performance of the firm. Information systems make it possible for firms

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