Managing Digital Practice Report 2022

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Managing Digital
Practice

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Executive Summary
The aim of this report is to analyse how emerging technologies transform
common organisational operations of companies which provides them
with a competitive advantages. Examples of Unilever, General Electronics
and Netflix is analysed in this report to understand how emerging
technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Additive manufacturing and Big
data provides them with a competitive edge respectively. These
technologies reduce operational, supply chain and marketing costs of
these companies while making it easier for them to manage their
operations while focusing on the interest of their customers which sustain
their growth in the market.

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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................3
Discussion...................................................................................................4
Conclusion...................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................8
Appendix...................................................................................................10
Table of Figures
Figure 1: Netflix and use of Big data.........................................................10

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Introduction
In today’s competitive business world, organisations are relying on
emerging technologies in order to improve their business operations
which allow them to generate a competitive advantage in the market. The
use of emerging technologies allows companies to change their current
business practices by adopting more cost effective and efficient methods
that revamp their current operations. As per Higgins (2018), emerging
technologies have transformative potential since they can completely
change most common aspects of organisational operations of businesses
which build and sustain new competitive advantage for companies across
hyper connected customers. Connecting with customers is a good
example since these technologies also allow organisations to connect with
new customers on a global scale and develop products and services which
cater to their needs (Porter and Heppelmann, 2015). Currently, the
adoption of technologies such as additive manufacturing or 3D printing,
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big data, and others open new opportunities for
businesses to improve their supply chain operations. Furthermore, these
technologies also allow challengers to disrupt the market share of
incumbents by finding new ways of production and delivery of services
which gives them an edge through reduction of costs and improvement in
the quality. These technologies have both positive and negative impacts
of businesses which enforce them to invest in research and development
(R&D) operations to make sure that they find ways to adopt these
technologies in order to improve their business operations. The objective
of this report is to evaluate three emerging technologies which include AI,
additive manufacturing and big data to understand how companies such
as Unilever, General Electronics and Netflix and how they affect their
organisational operations respectively.