Like many business owners, Clark Kepler wondered if his bookstore would survive the onslaught of Internet and Web-based technologies. But Kepler’s has survived and thrived by adding new E-commerce services to the traditional mix of products and services that its customers wanted from their neighborhood bookstore.


What you need to know
Information technologies, including Web-based Information Systems are playing a vital and expanding role in business. Web-based systems can help all kinds of businesses improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their business processes, managerial decision-making, and workgroup collaboration and thus strengthen their competitive positions in a rapidly changing marketplace.

This is true whether information technology is used to support product development, customer support, interactive electronic commerce transactions, or any other business activity. Web-based information technologies and systems are fast becoming a necessary ingredient for business success in today’s dynamic and global environment.


Strategic Uses of Web-based Information Systems (WBIS)
How can business managers use the investments in WBIS to directly support a firms's competitive advantage? The figure below answers that question with a summary of the many ways that WBIS could help a business implement the five basic strategies for competitive advantage.

Investments in WBIS enables a firm to build strategic IT capabilities that allow it to take advantage of strategic opportunities when they arise.

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