Using the value chain model, a company can create strategic advantages or competitive edge. This model focuses on specific areas or steps of a business process where the application of information technology increasing the overall operational efficiency of the organization and thereby adds value to the company’s worth (Laudon and Loudon, 2015). I would like to map the value chain of a restaurant Chili’s for example. According to the text book, a company’s business process can be divided into two categories. These are the primary activities and supporting activities.
Primary activities define the set of core activities which defines product or services the company provides to its customers in terms of value. There are two critical activities of any restaurant.
- Operation which mostly involves the preparation of food in the kitchen
- Service involves taking the order, delivery of food, and associated entertainment.
Support activities enable the restaurant to connect and deliver the product or services sets from the primary activities to the customer. Examples are activities of management, administration, computerized procurement systems, human resource management involving hiring. These support activities are most of the times done ahead of the primary activities to optimize the company resources. Management uses information systems to complete these activities.
Customers visit the restaurants not just for the food, but to have an “experience”, which is also heavily influenced by the service. The service not only include the jobs of the waiter, but the greeting during the time of the arrival, the ambience inside the restaurant, the locations of televisions and the choice of music to name a few. Restaurants which can address these needs of customers through proper tools can have sustained business value and growth.
Restaurants now have brought technology to the dining table itself, where the ordering and entertainment can be also achieved. Digital food order systems these days eliminate mistakes of language and human interpretations.
Marchand, et al. (2000) discussed the interaction of people, information and technology and answered how it affects the business performance. The journal used the concept of “information orientation” or IO, which is a measure of effective information usage. They segregated the IO into three areas. These are the Information technology Practices (ITP), Information management Practices (IMP) and the Information Behaviors and Values (IBV). ITP involves the basic capability to manage the infrastructure and applications where are IMP is about organizing the information and the data life cycle. IBV measure the business process in terms of behaviors of effective usage of the information.