Business Intelligence and Competitive Advantage: The Amazon Case

This report examines the role of business intelligence (BI) in Amazon's ability to develop relevant insights for stakeholders and achieve a competitive advantage. It discusses how BI tools aid in data analysis, decision-making, and the creation of informative reports for stakeholders. The report highlights Amazon's use of BI for processing large datasets, tracking customer behavior, and making strategic decisions regarding product development. A SWOT analysis of BI tools is provided, outlining strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Furthermore, it explores how Amazon can leverage information system theories, such as adaptive structuration theory and diffusion theory, to enhance its competitive edge through real-time information collection and improved decision-making processes. The report concludes that BI is crucial for managing big data, satisfying customers, and maintaining competitiveness in the e-commerce landscape.

Business Intelligence Big Data
Report
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Role of business intelligence to develop relevant insight for stakeholders.................................3
Ways by which Amazon can achieve competitive advantages by using business intelligence...6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
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INTRODUCTION
Business intelligence techniques helps the executives, businessmen to analyse the data for
developing useful informative report for business. By using this technology businessman can
analyse the data from IT system or from external sources to make it use for achieving desire
goals (El-Adaileh and Foster, 2019). Amazon an e-commerce company is the highest ranking
company in UK, company started from online book store now leading in e-commerce field
categories varies from electronics items to books and literature etc. their product and services
offers the highest productive e-commerce site in UK. Following assignment consists of business
intelligence role to help relevant insight view of stakeholders, it also discuss, how amazon
organization can use business intelligence technologies to achieve competitive advantage.
MAIN BODY
Role of business intelligence to develop relevant insight for stakeholders
Business intelligence tools gives advantage of decision-making, analysation of data, it
also gives clear image of business information to the stakeholders in making of final report.
Business intelligence covers large areas of technologies which analysed and processed the data
through which its tools can perform several business operations. Business Intelligence tools
helped amazon e-commerce site in analysation of data, it allows amazon to process and stored
their raw data without wasting their time and resources. It helped company to make good
decisions for company's betterment. It benefited the amazon company in processing of large data
as for the e-commerce company time-management is very important. Business tool provides help
to amazon company in process of decision-making it gives the proper evaluation of data through
which company is able to take various decision regarding their new product development or their
customer's recommendations (Kara and Fırat, 2018). With the help of this technology amazon
company is able to deliver their product in time or it also helps them to track their customer's so
that they can use customer's recommendations to develop or enhance their product.
Business intelligence tools enhance the company's progress and maximize their revenues.
Amazon e-commerce company uses this tools for fast and accurate report, it adds values in the
data through which they will be able to take right decisions for their company. The main reason
for using of business intelligence tools by amazon company is that they want to keep track on
their customer behavioural activities, these tools gives them a customer buying trend or their
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purchasing behaviour, through which it processed all data and construct a useful logical
informative report which helps the company in their decision-making process, as brand value of
amazon is more in its field because of this they must have to develop product on time to manage
the time business intelligence tools helped them to complete their task in given time.
SWOT analysis of business intelligence tools:
Strength:
Strength of business intelligence technology are they offer fast and accurate analysation
of data, by using this technology amazon can easily make competitive informative report to
expand their business.
Weakness:
Main weakness of business intelligence technology is that it compiles historical data
which might not beneficial for business purposes, another weakness of business intelligence tool
is its complex algorithm which require operator who possess deep knowledge about it.
Opportunity:
Business and industries have lot of data to processed in this business intelligence tools
helped them to construct a complete informative report for easy decision-making.
Threats:
Main threat to business intelligence is its complex algorithm sometimes it provides poor
quality of data or it can be easily affected by the external factors. Innovation in its algorithm can
give benefit to the amazon company as they use this technology to make fast and accurate
business report (Renganathan, 2021).
Business stakeholders can be a individual or a group that are part of organization they can
be affected by the business. They can be classified as an internal stakeholder or external
stakeholder. Business intelligence tools helped stakeholder to use the data sets to make their
company's financial report. By using business intelligence tools stakeholder of amazon company
are able to analyse complete performance of company, with the help of relevant data given by
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these tools stakeholders are capable of making good financial report of their company, these
tools played an important role in the progress of their company. Primary stakeholders are
customers which are directly connected to the company for their financial growth. Amazon
generally more concern about their customers as they are the one who can help in their brand
development to achieve this task business intelligence tools gives complete data of company's
customer, company can easily access the wants and desires of their customer's to make
innovation in their product.
Employees are the main key stakeholder of any company because they are responsible for
the company growth. Their qualitative work completes the desires of the customers. Employees
in amazon company offers good and supportive environment so that they can achieve company's
desired goals (Nalchigar and Yu, 2017). Employees are capable of financially benefited the
company, business intelligence tools helped them to develop a good opportunity for the company
to achieve company's goals. By using business intelligence tools it helped company's employees
to carried out their task in effective manner.
Most analysis of business tools
Mission:
Business intelligence tools helped the amazon to accomplish their missions and goals of
success. It processed the data and convert it into logical informative data through which
company can easily proceed with their development of product.
Objectives:
Objective defines as the specific goal of organization to accomplish the mission. Business
intelligence tools helped amazon company to achieve their mission by providing help in
decision-making process so company can easily take right decision for their company's
betterment.
Strategy:
Business intelligence tools gives the strategies which includes several tasks it enables
business to build long term strategies to accomplish their company's mission. These tools helped
amazon to move according to strategies to earn their successive goals.
Tactics:
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Business intelligence tools use the tactics to implement the strategy for the organization.
They construct easy and useful report so that it can be easily understood by its user. By using this
tactics' amazon company can easily achieve their targets (Vallurupalli and Bose, 2018).
Ways by which Amazon can achieve competitive advantages by using business intelligence
It is already stated that business intelligence or technical infrastructure plays a vital role
in this digital era as it helps companies in collecting, storing as well as analysing data that are
produced by their business activities. Analysed data helps companies in making better decisions
and taking competitive advantages. Amazon, multinational technology company is striving hard
for being in the competition as there are numbers of technology companies such as: Netflix,
Apple and google that are performing a great job. So, this company wants to take competitive
advantages and it believes that by focusing on business intelligence and insight, it can become
the market leader (Hewage, Halgamuge, Syed and Ekici, 2018). Business intelligence conceptual
model is process focused design theory that can help company in understanding as well as
developing business intelligence system.
Before discussing some information system theories, it needs to identify the intensity of
competition in this sector. With the help of Porter’s five forces analysis model, it will evaluate
competitive intensity such as:
5 Forces Intensity Analysis
Customers’
bargaining
power
High The main aim of Amazon is to satisfy customers and there
are numbers of players who are striving hard and give
attractive offers to customers. Switching cost is also low and
it is the reason as this power is high and it can create threats
for this company.
Suppliers’
bargaining
power
Low Amazon is well-known online retailer and has the upper
hand over the suppliers in the supply chain. There are
numbers of suppliers and switching cost is negligible that is
why this force has low power (Sadq, Sabir and Saeed,
2018).
Threats of High There are numbers of offline brands that are also providing
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substitutes their products and service online such as: Walmart and
others. It has become easier for companies to provide
services online so, for this reason this power is high.
Threats of new
entrants
Low In this digital era, everyone knows as how to access internet
and customers also find easier in buying products online.
So, companies do not find it tough to create an online retail
store. But reaching to the level of Amazon is quite tough as
attracting customers and making them believe that this
online store is not fraud is tough. So, this intensity has low
power.
Competitive
rivalry
High There is high intensity in online retail industry because
numbers of secondary brands are offering online sales.
Examples of top rivals are: eBay, flip cart and Alibaba.
On the basis of above discussed intensity of competition, it can be said that Amazon
needs to strive hard for being in the competition and specially for retaining customers with it for
the long run. For this purpose, it will require focusing on business intelligence and making use of
advanced technologies.
Some information system theories that it can apply for taking competitive advantages include:
Information system theories
Adaptive structuration theory: It is one of the effective theory that investigate the
interface between information system and organization. It mainly focuses on social aspects in
regard to technology and by making use of this theory, Amazon can examine the role of
advanced information technologies in organization change and accordingly, it can invest in IT
for attracting customers and providing them valuable services (Rains and Bonito, 2017).
Company can also know that how technologies and an effective system can influence societies
and their behaviour.
Diffusion theory: It is the most used theory in which Rogers states that diffusion is a
procedure by which innovation can be effectively communicated via a channel over time in a
social system. Technological innovation can be beneficial as it can help this company in
providing accessible services to customers. There are main 4elements that needed to be focused
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if this company wants to improve its services and want to take competitive advantages such as:
an innovation, communication, social system and over time. For successful implementation of
this theory, this company needs to categorize its employees as per the strategies such as:
innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. By categorize people
accordingly, it can bring innovative ideas within business that is the main key of success, growth
and competitiveness of company. There are numbers of advantages that can be taken by Amazon
if it implements all these theories and models such as:
Collection of real time information that can help it out in delivering services in a timely
manner. It can make use of latest numbers and can be accurate in its predictions.
Overall, it can be said that business intelligence is one of the main source of competitive
advantage because it improves decision making process of companies. It can be suggested to
Amazon that it should make use of Dashboard that is a control panel set within the central
console of a vehicle. This software or page provides detailed status information on services and
company may find easier in developing strategies and making decisions as per the data presented
on it (Min, So and Jeong, 2019). It gives overview of reports as well as metrics that company
care about the most. Overall, it can be said that Amazon can manage big consumer data and can
satisfy them all in an effective manner that is the main key of competitiveness.
CONCLUSION
From the above study it has been summarized that business intelligence or advanced
technology plays a vital role as it helps companies in managing as well as analysing big data. It
has discussed some models and techniques of business intelligence that can be used by online
retailers in order to manage big data and providing valuable services to customers after analysing
data. It has further shown effectiveness of SWOT, PEST and MOST models and ways in which
it can help companies in knowing areas where they need to focus for better performance.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adaptive structuration theory pp.72-85.
El-Adaileh, N.A. and Foster, S., 2019. Successful business intelligence implementation: a
systematic literature review. Journal of Work-Applied Management.
Hewage, T.N., Halgamuge, M.N., Syed, A. and Ekici, G., 2018. Big Data Techniques of Google,
Amazon, Facebook and Twitter. J. Commun. 13(2). pp.94-100.
Kara, M.E. and Fırat, S.Ü.O., 2018. Sustainability, risk, and business intelligence in supply
chains. In Global Business Expansion: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and
Applications (pp. 1424-1461). IGI Global.
Min, S., So, K.K.F. and Jeong, M., 2019. Consumer adoption of the Uber mobile application:
Insights from diffusion of innovation theory and technology acceptance model. Journal of
Travel & Tourism Marketing, 36(7), pp.770-783.
Nalchigar, S. and Yu, E., 2017, July. Conceptual modeling for business analytics: a framework
and potential benefits. In 2017 IEEE 19th Conference on Business Informatics (CBI) (Vol.
1, pp. 369-378). IEEE.
Rains, S.A. and Bonito, J.A., 2017. Adaptive structuration theory. The international
encyclopedia of organizational communication, pp.1-9.
Renganathan, V., 2021. Business Intelligence: An overview.
Sadq, Z.M., Sabir, H.N. and Saeed, V.S.H., 2018. Analyzing the Amazon success
strategies. Journal of process management. New Technologies, 6(4).based
analysis. Decision Support Systems. 111.
Vallurupalli, V. and Bose, I., 2018. Business intelligence for performance measurement: A case
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