EUROPE ASIA BUSINESS SCHOOL

CASE ANALYSIS American Hospital Supply Corporation---The ASAP System(A) Ashutosh---11107---PGPM---2012

Case Study Analysis:

American Hospital Supply Corporation The ASAP System (A)

Q 1-How much competitive advantage cans IT really provides? Ans: In today s competitive business environment IT has shown its presence in almost every field of the each Industry and this is because of its ability to improve efficiency (ability to reduce time and cost). Hence of course it has all capability to give a competitive advantage to a company. Information Technology provides gathering data, extraction of data, effective presentation of data, reduces human intervention. Hence, IT definitely provides a competitive edge. In the context of the case study the system installed by American Hospital Supply Corporation was not great, in the sense that any one of the competitors could install and use the technology. But the way the technology will be used will make the difference. Q2: How can company find opportunity for such uses of IT? Ans: Company can use technology to gather data related to its business so that it knows its current position and take corrective measures really fast. Company can identify processes where it can use technology to reduce human intervention, so that human errors can be reduced. With the right kind of question asked from the customers for feedback purpose, with the use of the detailed information available the solutions can be written. Company can perform the internal data analysis with the data collected over the period of time. The same data could be used to predict the so that finally the conclusion can be drawn. Various tools are available in IT to come out with the concrete results. Q3: What can we do to make IT related competitive advantage sustainable over period of time? Ans Sustainable competitive advantage provides long term advantage and is not easily achievable. It can be developed with continues evaluation and updating the IT within the organization i.e. by designing the process in more user friendly manner. Implementing CMS

model could serve the purpose as it includes content creation; content management and content publication by implementing following in the model : User-friendly Interface Content Migration Tools Immediate Previews Workflow; User Permission Management; Version Control & Archiving; Document Expiry Management Page Templates Publish Accessible Content Q4: What factors which includes Industry, technology and others made ASAP successful? Ans: Analytical System Automatic Purchasing (ASAP) was the new order system, with the main frame computer support, developed by American hospital Supply Corporation. This system was evolved with continues research over the customers need of placing the order for the medicines with a view of minimizing the labor efforts and time to place and receive the order from AHSC. ASAP model was full proof and technically sound that it hadn t crashed once over the life time of the same. This model had facility of tracking the inventory levels and automatically placing the orders which saved the man hours of hospital and even the paper work which was a big problem at big hospitals. ASAP model was very unique which was helping in the reduction of time and cost investment in placing the order and delivery. In health care sector reliability plays a vital role and this model was meeting requirements. With implementation of ASAP there was less intervention in the SCM and more focus was on the sales part. With this product there was a facility and access was given to the customer for tracking of the treatment. Q5: As a competitor of American Hospital supplier in mid 1995 how would you respond to ASAP? Ans: ASAP model brought revolution in the health care sector. With features like maintaining inventory level, customer satisfaction, and value for money and reliability, it became popular in the industry. To beat ASAP and as a competitor I would have focused on following points: 1) More competent feedback model and appropriate analysis of the results. 2) Develop and design a new model which is competent enough to stand before ASAP and which would be available to customers at cheaper rates. Q6: What should American Hospital do next to achieve competitive advantage through I.T? Ans: Apart from the ASAP, American hospital could do the following to achieve the competitive advantage through 1) Reducing the cost to customer with more additional support 2) Developing a competent feedback model for customer and analyzing the result 3) It could move into preserving stock and designing competent inventory model.

Q7: As IOS evolved and develop, ASAP is an example of IOS. How do they impact different organizations they link? Ans: IOS is an Internal Organization System and is different from the traditional distributed data processing technology. IOA is a system in which there is information system which works between two or more than two organization and is able to connect through the data of all the organization. IOA has brought revolution in terms of distance data. IOA is linked to different organization like Hospitals / Distribution Centers Different players are involved in data handling and processing. DBMS at all the positions and locations are maintained. This gets more transparency and reliability. With use of BI analysis current scenario and projections could be established on strong grounds. This would serve as an input for strong decision making. Q8: How are AHSC and customers impacted by ASAP? Ans: ASHC is impacted by ASAP as: 1. It gets consistent business from hospitals. 2. This results in better inventory management and supply chain management 3. Customers database is increased with new customers and retention of customers 4. Paper work and maintenance has been reduced and SCM being streamlined thus more focus on sales part. Customers are impacted by ASAP as: 1. Reliability on the system has improved 2. Duplication of work is avoided. 3. Orders can be placed easily now and it has also improved the inventory level with improved delivery measures Q 9: ASAP is a providing competitor to compute a linkage b/w ASHC and customers. How does it differ from traditional data processing technologies? Ans: It differs from traditional data processing technologies as traditional processing can not meet the challenges like volume explosion & required procedure to compete with the similar times competitors in same domain. But it was really become a different solution for the ASAP system providing competitor to compute a linkage between ASHC & customers as ASAP s technology upgradation had taken a different position. ASAP system provided the key technologies for 1) Interpolation between application systems 2) Publish/Subscribe to data services 3) Locate & move data & services 4) Co-ordinately use many distributed resources including data, computing instruments etc.

5) High performance processing for proper security.