The new strategic business resource: Information

Abstract

A producer of a long line of related products developed a product‐cost information system that helped the company understand its cost structure and use it as a basis for its pricing, promotion, and sales‐incentive programs. The result is a profitability advantage that competitors still do not understand. • Merrill Lynch developed a computer information system that allowed it to offer a new product—the “Cash Management Account.” In the four years it took competitors to develop similar systems. Merrill Lynch gained 400 thousand new customers and $14 billion in newly held assets. • Dun & Bradstreet systematically assesses its voluminous computer data bases for ideas concerning how information can be created and combined to form new product offerings. • An office products firm developed a competitor information system that permits it to compile and correlate such accurate data on competitors that one manager finds he often knows more about his competitor's business than they do.

Citation

King, W.R. (1984), "The new strategic business resource: Information", Planning Review, Vol. 12 No. 5, pp. 26-29. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb054074