EA Games

flip is lift off of plaqueal growth and survival in our modern orbicular economy. If an organization is going to grow and survive, it occupys more than conventional strategic occupation protrudes. One of the principal drivers of competition is technological advancements. Companys whoremaster develop a strong war-ridden advantage finished the strategic exercising of culture engineering science. This white paper leave converse k right offledge applied science (IT) concepts that have successfully been utilized by some oppo situation organizations.The purpose is to benchmark how other companies have successfully implemented maturement technology and how SaveWithUS drive out conceptualize these strategies. The centralise of IT is non simply on the internal applications or computer systems that reside on the network or else the focus is the strategic approach that information systems can have to defy the line of work plans, cultures, and objectives of the organ ization.Ultimately, a strategic approach to information technology should cleanse a ships orders closed-door-enterprise(a) advantage, credit line intelligence, come down costs, sum up margin, streamline line of reasoning lickes speed, accuracy, and reliability, communication, data based decision making, and growing boilersuit node value (Mickler, 2008). numerous start-up companies develop a business plan but rely heavily on their own convey when it comes to business decision making rather than facts that an existing company would use.As the company grows, mistakes accommodate more costly, they will rely more and more in information to base sound decisions. SaveWithUS is at the juncture where business decisions need to be based on facts not guesses. To remain agonistic and profitable, SaveWithUS need to reduce costs of merchandise manufactured and products purchased for resale. Technology has changed the way information is captured, stored, processed, analyzed, distr ibuted, communicated and the organizational home which is used to reduce costs, increase profits, and gain a warring advantage.The effective use of information technology requires an organization and ethnic change. The approximately important comp mavennt in the change equation is making the decision to change. If resistance to change permeates, this will lead to the breakdown and irrelevance of what was once a strong organization (CTU Online, 2008). Change is forever pass of business sustainability. Understanding the external business environment can rectify the strategic approach that an organization should adopt in a competitive food market. A proudly competitive environment includes multiple firms targeting he homogeneous market to win the same business.The external environment has forces which business essential contend with for survival. Michal Porter has devised a five forces model that focus on these external pressures. The five pressures are 1) rivalry among exi sting competition, 2) threats of substitute products, 3) negotiate power of suppliers, 4) bargaining power of channels and end drug users, 5) barriers to entry. This model can be very helpful to think of competition in its broadest sense which suggests areas for competitive posture.Porters five-forces model stick outs the framework to seek an organizations position and analyze a business level strategy which will describe how an organization competes in the marketplace (Frenzel & Frenzel, 2004). These are just a few reasons why information technology is the critical infrastructure of any organization. The case study referenced herein is electronic humanistic classify (EA), the leading independent word-painting secret plan publishing company, producing popular titles such(prenominal)(prenominal) as The Sims, Madden NFL, and Medal of Honor.They also publish games based on Hollywood franchises such as the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and The Godfather. Nestled in Silicon Valley, Electronic humanistic control is a very successful organization with more than 50 best- mete outers that sell more than a cardinal copies each. Many people would believe that Electronic Arts is a video game ripening company which base its success from the rich natural endowment pool of creative people, artists, animators, programmers, and technicians. This is a passing competitive industry and getting more competitive every yr with a fickle node base.EA has competitors such as Activision, Take-Two, and Vivendi Games which all sell strong in the marketplace. It would be reasonable to assume they also have a highly gifted staff of developers and creative artists. EA is successful because they are the model of a leading(p) counselling company. gibe to EA chairwoman and COO John Riccitiello, EA pulls it off by honing the way that it develops and markets games by thinking of its products as delirious, cinematic experiences, not toys. Electronic Arts is in the busin ess of delivering a total entertainment experience.The company built its creativity on a foundation of care discipline (Salter, 2007). EA understands the completive landscape and performs extensive due diligence. Riccitiello has stated, We often know more around the feature set of our competitions products than our competition does. Electronic Arts recognizes that gaining a competitive advantage will not materialize because of slicker graphics, audio, or mend storylines than the competition consumers expect these features to improve over time and that is part of the free rein industry.EA knows that the high-tech imagery features they develop today will only be copied tomorrow which will not provide long-term advantage. EA has strong competitive intelligence, forecasting, budgeting, timing, and methodical project management disciplines. EA uses information technology to store monetary data, gross tax income data, important customer data, competitive data, and offer access to piece this information across business units. EA has the discipline of sharing best practices and technologies exploitation intranet libraries.This enables data to become more accurate and to be shared or broadcast faster finished a more reliable delegacy (Mickler, 2008). An e-business strategy can be defined as the electronic intend of internal and external communications for an organization. Internally, employees can use a private intranet to share information, facilitate knowledge dissemination, management reporting, collaborate with business partners, sales promotions, and competitive intelligence, all of these features and more can be used with the development of an intranet.EA is diligent to understand their customers. They know that what is real to their consumers is what is on TV. Electronic Arts believes in gaining better understanding of their interview through the use of focus groups. These are non-EA groups of gamers and EA takes their recommendations seriously to the point they will do a gross(a) rewrite. Traditionally, the turn industry is male dominated. Industry demographics suggest the target audience is male between the ages of 16 and 24. EA wants to expand their market beyond the normal gaming demographics.However, EA proceeds with caution not to lose current customers that do not want to see dumbed down products. When making complex decisions on marketing strategies and tactics, it is important look at delicate data to in decision making. discipline technology can provide the means of development marketing intelligence, trends, economic data, competitive market data, technological, demographics, government sources, and cultural and affectionate information to provide a solid foundation upon from which to draw (Salter, 2007). victimisation e-business strategies such as customer relationship management (CRM) tools can call out important customer data to develop products and service special to their needs, wants, and desires. T he prove of their data was a game titled the SIMS which attracts customers of all ages, thus ontogenesis new markets with different set of wants, needs, and desires. In addition, e-business is a means to reduce customer and supplier expenses, meet customer and supplier needs in a defect-free manner, and improve the speed in which these functions can take place. friendship management tools are processes the organization will employ to collect, store, analyze, and distribute information. Information technology offers data mining technique which are the convergence of technologies that provide computations to make sense of all the information stored (Frenzel & Frenzel, 2004). The maturity of an information system in an organization can have a pick out effect on the speed, accuracy, and reliability of its data processing. Information technology can eliminate the manual logging of paperwork, eradicate human error and increase speed, accuracy and reliability of the information stored (Mickler, 2008).Some of the mundane tasks can become completely automated through bar edict scanners and other technology which will reduce labor costs, increase accuracy of data, and induce document cost controls (Mickler, 2008). I addition, information technology can improve the manufacturing process while meeting customer demands and reduce costs. In an effort to accurately control inventory costs, SaveWithUS should debate Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing and including technology to help reduce costs. JIT does not use the conventional ways of producing products with large batch sizes at high volumes.The JIT philosophy is where machine operators produce only the items needed, when it is requested, and on time. Information technology also plays a vital role in measuring the extradite on investment for these new processes (Frenzel & Frenzel, 2004). Computer inventory management systems can control and coordinate delivery of raw materials or components from suppliers with ta kings schedule, thereby minimizing inventory carrying costs. It is absurd to realize management can not track the percentage of repeat business, the accuracy of the expense of manufacturing costs, and sales nigh(a)s of sold (CTU Online, 2008).The objective of SaveWithUS needs to be the development of a realistic business strategy that has full support of top management, established clear goals, development of long-term customer relationships, and provides maximum value. Bringing quality value to the customer is vital in the competitive and global business innovation. A competitive advantage is achieved when an organization has integrated information technology in the business activities with the value chain more cost-effectively than the competition.The goal of a business is to sell their products and services and keep customers buying in the future by means of adding value. Customers exchange some matter of value, such as money, for the products and services an organization produ ces. Strategic readiness allows an organization to recognize how the customer sees the value of a companys product or service and helps better position their goods in the market to make a profit (Frenzel & Frenzel, 2004). Strategic plans will use resources of people, money, facilities, and technical capabilities that are required in order to achieve the goals and objectives.The goal of information technology is to support these efforts and add value of speed, accuracy, and reliability (Mickler, 2008). In the games industry, success, novelty, and great innovative designs do not automatically mean that a company will enjoy long-term success. In fact, the annals of the gaming publishing industry is eroded with once triumphant companies that currently are no longer existence. It takes a distinct mixture of success and business savvy to stay afloat and competitive. This review is hypothetical, created solely to fulfill telephone line task requirements.The review of and title of an a rticle depicts Electronic Arts (from now EA) as Playing to Win, the fact is that they are indeed compete the business game to win. EA is one of the worlds foremost reliant interactive software package package ontogenesis and publishing company. Since its inception, EA has garnered more than 700 awards for outstanding software in the U. S. and Europe. According to their own on-line career opportunity web site EA(2010) they adduce that EA markets its products worldwide under four print logos and has over 33 product franchises that have reached more than a million unit sales worldwide.We will discuss more about their target market audiences in the next two sections. EA see themselves as a company that provides a product to its target market that appeals in the sense of interactive cinematic gaming experience. According to Salter (2002) Computer and video games are a bigger business than the movies, and the biggest force in games is Electronic Arts a company whose blockbuster title s dazzle millions of customers and generate billions of dollars in sales.As the world leaders in interactive entertainment we can say that EAs most important competitive advantage is the fact they have lasted 20 days in the business and has gathered enough experience to leverage inheritance into the entertainment gaming industry. Their other advantage is that they allow their 12 developing studios innovation freedom while impressing the discipline to meet deadlines. This means that its not all about gaming but also about planning, and management having a good business plan in place and a good vision is certainly a good competitive advantage.This is corroborated by Rabin (2010) when he says that the business plan developed was visionary and had three key elements first, that the creative talent at the company would be treated exchangeable artists, involved in the marketing, and prevalently revered more than at other companies in the industry second, that they would develop proprie tary tools and technology that would enable them to chop-chop develop their titles cross-platform and third, that they would handle the distribution to stores. Their primary target market (audience) is the users of travel entertainment systems.The customary gamers are males in between the ages 16-through 24 year of ages. EA has continue to expand and move their traditional demographics As the market expands, their enthusiasts is to form out how to publish products for people who are not the within the traditional demographic model. The fact is that EAs present their content to a wide general audience appealing to all key demographic market segments by logically brainstorming their products as an emotional experience, How do they create an emotional experience?The emotional experience is created through offering their target markets a highly targeted campaign contributing the opportunity for the user to interact with the game. Its a simple but very radical idea in which the users is part of the cinematic experience, therefore the user does not see the game as a toy but as an appealing realistic experience. Currently, their specific target market audience comprises a wide general range of users utilizing advance game consoles, personal computer system, video game consoles such as Nintendo, Play Station, Play Stations, and numerous others.Lets clarify one thing about game publishing companies. They are exactly just that Publishers , they dont consider themselves to be developers. The game entertainment publishing arena is quite ready and extremely competitive. Beside having fun and playing games it takes discipline to be creativity and code award winning games. This is a fact that is corroborated by Salter (2010) when he writes that it takes a tough company to make entertaining games. Salter quotes the president and COO of The forgotten look of creativity is discipline, beside discipline it takes a good development team and a good project manager with a sens e of scheduling, creating buzz about the product through a hard core marketing campaign.Everything centers around information technology especially the discipline of methodically managing their projects, their information technology systems play a large aspect of their success through regimented collaborative best practices across their an intranet library. In closing in my opinion what makes Electronic Arts a latent winner is their ability to take ingenious people who are highly motivated and talented and create excessive amounts of value. Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is the worlds leading interactive entertainment software company.Founded in 1982, the Company develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, cellular handsets and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under four brand names EA SPORTS, EA, EA SPORTS Freestyle and POGO. In fiscal 2008, EA posted GAAP net revenue of $3. 67 billion and had 27 titles that sold more than one million copies. We were tasked to improve the functionality of the site, both technically and visually.The technical aspects of keeping up with ncreased user demands and features and facilities offered by the site were all dealt with to everyones satisfaction. It was felt that the site architecture and the user experience still left room for improvement, and we have oodles to offer to fill this need. It was also important to ensure that the CRM and frontend complimented one other visually. 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