Technology Competitive Advantage - Essay Example

Technology Competitive Advantage Disruptive technology is basically a replacement of an old technology by an innovation that creates new market value for products or services. Adoption of disruptive technology can be either risky or profitable venture. By using a technology in its early stage can enable one to establish new markets but can also become vulnerable to unforeseen risks. The key lies in choosing the correct time to enter the market (Evans, 10). Disruptive technology can change the structure of an industry by replacing traditional values with new values.

It can encourage corporate planners to embark in new avenues for their organizations (Evans, 8). Machine-to-Machine Communication: RFID One example of disruptive technology is the next revolution in machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. It is essentially a technology that helps to establish communication between different sectors of a business without the involvement of additional personnel. One example of an M2M component can be RFID (radio frequency identification). Today, the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) can bring revolution in the supply chain management.

RFID tags are “small objects that can be attached to or incorporated into any object, and contain silicon chips and antennas that enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID reader” (Santosh & Smith, 2008, p.128). Overall Low-Cost Leadership Strategy In order to execute an overall low-cost leadership strategy, the emphasis should be on finding innovative ways for cost reduction or substitutions in every aspect of supply and distribution chain (Orcullo, 227).

The principle focus area of RFID is to provide possibilities to improve the supply chain management, and this can be advantageous for retailers. In combination with mobile computing and online technologies, RFID can help an organization to efficiently manage and upkeep its stocks. This technology can eliminate manual labour for identification of products and their storage, thus labour cost can be reduced to increase the profit margin (Al-Odeh, 343). RFID is an electronic substitute of barcodes and is a vast improvement with superior accuracy, real-time tracking and top-speed read rate.

In this ever changing business world, convenience and time-saving techniques are priorities, and RFID is a key to these elements. RFID is currently being used in manufacturing sector, retail stores and supply chain industry. RFID technology can be beneficial to the company in relation to inventory management and supply chain management. Although the initial investment can be huge with no real possibility of returns in the short run, it can however prove to be profitable in the long run. This is because through efficient inventory management it can ensure increase in sales due to reduced out-of-stock items thus leading to higher revenues for the company, and this can give any company an edge over its competitors.

One example can be Wal-Mart stores that have implemented RFID technology for cost reduction and increased customer satisfaction (Chen, 7). References Al-Odeh, Mahmoud. “Implementing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology into Supply Chain of Small-to-Medium Manufacturing Factories”, International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering, 2.9 (2012) 343-347 Chen, Yee. (2008) “The Wal-Mart RFID Initiative”. 2008, March 2, 2015 from: http://www.winmec.ucla.edu/rfid/course/2008s/The%20Walmart%20Initiative.

pdf Evans, Nicholas, D. Business Innovation and Disruptive Technology, NJ: Pearson Education, 2003 Orcullo, Norberto A. Fundamentals of Strategic Management, Rex Bookstore, 2008 Santosh, Brian L. & Smith, Lars S. “RFID in the Supply Chain: Panacea or Pandora’s Box”, Communications of the ACM, 51.10 (2008) 127-131