For a company to thrive today, strategists must find ways to increase the organization's ability to read and react to industry and market changes.
The companies chosen for this task vary by industry: a famous automobile manufacturer (Ford) a bank going through a merger (Compass) and a start-up software company (DawningStreams). Emphasis must be placed on their adaptability in strategic analysis and their adaptability in strategic management of business organizations. The organization must have a strategic management model.
DawningStreams is a software company; they will need to monitor those companies who would be their competition to ensure their product offers better functionality. Some companies are even recreating full-fledged strategic-planning groups.
Ford Motor Company – Socio-cultural
Ford Motor Company embraces the socio-cultural changes taking place to allow the company to move in the right direction with respect to attitudes in the society. The organization is committed to the hybrid to improve fuel economy as a global strategy to meet customer demands. The environmental scanning by Ford Motor Company has allowed the company to be knowledgeable of the fact that the people in the United States are buying more small cars today than any other type of vehicle segment. Ford Motor Company will continue to use the socio-cultural factors to drive the business and enjoy future success.
Ford Motor Company – Legal –
Ford Motor Company with regard to the Environmental Protection Agency adheres to the legal aspect of environmental scanning. Ford Motor Company accepted an award in March 2007 from the Environmental Protection Agency called the Energy Star 2007 Partner of the Year Award in Energy Management. Due to the environmental scanning that takes place at Ford Motor Company the company will use the information that is collected and continue in this direction.
Ford Motor Company – Technology –
Another environmental scanning tool that Ford Motor Company monitors and uses would be the technological portion. The company has invested $1 billion in the latest technology for flexible manufacturing.
The technological changes that are being embraced by Ford Motor Company through environmental scanning enables the company to experience huge cost savings through new product launches and 50 percent reductions in cycle changeovers along with waste reduction. Artificial intelligence in the form of advanced visions systems and laser tracking systems are used to ensure quality through accuracy and dimension abilities. The environmental scanning of technology that is performed by Ford Motor Company has allowed the company to have positive outcomes in efficiency while remaining a competitive company in the industry through cost savings and continuous improvement.
Compass Bank- Political -
On February 16, 2007, Compass Bancshares, Inc., the parent company of Compass Bank, announced the signing of a definitive agreement under which Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (NYSE: BBV Madrid: BBVA) ("BBVA") will acquire Compass for a combination of cash and stock.
Compass is a $34 billion Southwestern financial holding company that operates 415 full-service banking centers in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Texas. Compass provides a broad array of products and services through three primary lines of business – Corporate Banking, Retail Banking and Wealth Management.
Compass Bank – Technology –
Compass Bank – Competition –
Others include the more concrete assets such as available capital, the organization structure, current technologies and information technology infrastructure.
DawningStreams - Competitors –
DawningStreams – Political -
(Bureau of Industry and Security, 2007).
DawningStreams will contain cryptographic functions. Cryptography is a key functionality of DawningStreams. (Bureau of Industry and Security, 2007).
DawningStreams - Technology/Intellectual Property –
The management of organizational strategy requires a comprehensive assessment of the macro environment of the business. The research implies that company size plays an essential part in the way senior management views security. Some companies are even recreating full-fledged strategic-planning groups. Retrieved March 31, 2007 from Proquest Database. Ford Motor Company (2006). Ford Motor Company. Retrieved March 2007,
from the World Wide Web, Web Site: Ford, S. (2004) Adapted from 13 Skills Managers Need to Succeed, Harvard Business School
Retrieved March 31, 2007 from EBSCOHost Database.
(2006). Ford implements advanced laser marking. Industrial Laser Solutions, 21(4), 6-7. Strategic Management: Formulation, Implementation, and Control. The McGraw-Hill Companies. Computer Security Update 8 (4). Retrieved March 30, 2007 from EBSCOHost Database. Retrieved March 27, 2007 from the Bureau of Industry and Security Website at Watson, G. (2003) Business Environmental Scans for Intellectual Property Strategy (PowerPoint Presentation). Retrieved March 28, 2007 from the Oklahoma State University website at ,1,Business Environmental Scans for Intellectual Property Strategy
Forces and Trends in Business
The business applicability of AI techniques is spread across functions ranging from finance management to forecasting and production. AI technologies help enterprises reduce latency in making business decisions, minimize fraud and enhance revenue opportunities.Definition of AI AI is a broad discipline that promises to simulate numerous innate human skills such as automatic programming, case-based reasoning, neural networks, decision-making, expert systems, natural language processing, pattern recognition and speech recognition etc. AI technologies bring more complex data-analysis features to existing applications.There are many definitions that attempt to explain what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is. AI is really an investigation into the creation of intelligence and that there is no reason for the intelligence that is created to be exactly the same as human intelligence.Importance of AI Enterprises that utilize AI-enhanced applications are expected to become more diverse, as the needs for the ability to analyze data across multiple variables, fraud detection and customer relationship management emerge as key business drivers to gain competitive advantage. Our ability to combine knowledge from all these fields will ultimately benefit our progress in the quest of creating an intelligent artificial being.Emergence of AI in business Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been used in business applications since the early eighties. Artificial Intelligence aims to improve machine behavior in tackling such complex tasks.Together with this, much of AI research is allowing us to understand our intelligent behavior. Artificial Intelligence can help us understand this process by recreating it, then potentially enabling us to enhance it beyond our current capabilities.Applications of AIThe potential applications of Artificial Intelligence are abundant. AI technologies bring more complex data-analysis features to existing applications.Business applications utilize the specific technologies mentioned earlier to try and make better sense of potentially enormous variability (for example, unknown patterns/relationships in sales data, customer buying habits, and so on). However, within the corporate world, AI is widely used for complex problem-solving and decision-support techniques in real-time business applications. The business applicability of AI techniques is spread across functions ranging from finance management to forecasting and product Artificial Neural NetworksAn artificial neural network (ANN), often just called a "neural network" (NN), is a mathematical model or computational model based on biological neural networks. In more practical terms neural networks are non-linear statistical data modeling tools. Real life applications of ANNThe tasks to which artificial neural networks are applied tend to fall within the following broad categories:• Function approximation, or regression analysis, including time series prediction and modeling.• Classification, including pattern and sequence recognition, novelty detection and sequential decision making.• Data processing, including filtering, clustering, blind source separation and compression.Application areas include system identification and control (vehicle control, process control), game-playing and decision making (backgammon, chess, racing), pattern recognition (radar systems, face identification, object recognition and more), sequence recognition (gesture, speech, handwritten text recognition), medical diagnosis, financial applications (automated trading systems), data mining (or knowledge discovery in databases, "KDD"), visualization and e-mail spam filtering.The proven success of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and expert systems has helped AI gain widespread adoption in enterprise business applications. Some of the key business applications of AI/ANN include fraud detection, cross-selling, customer relationship management analytics, demand prediction, failure prediction, and non-linear control.A majority of the enterprises adopt horizontal or vertical solutions that embed neural networks such as insurance risk assessment or fraud-detection tools, or data-mining tools that include neural networks (for instance, from SAS, IBM and SPSS) as one of the modeling options.Artificial Intelligence in ManufacturingAs the manufacturing industry becomes increasingly competitive, sophisticated technology has emerged to improve productivity. Artificial Intelligence in manufacturing can be applied to a variety of systems. Artificial Intelligence can optimize your production schedule and production runs. • Artificial Intelligence can optimize your schedule beyond normal human capabilities. Sophisticated technologies encompassing neural networks and business rules along with AI-based techniques are yielding positive results in transaction-oriented scenarios for financial services. This study focuses on applying AI in Finance, particularly in stock trading. In the field of Finance, artificial intelligence has long been used. Then, we move into how AI systems for stock trading will affect traders, companies and individuals. Recommendations include getting management buy-in, implementing the system and managing the whole structure to succeed.Artificial Intelligence in MarketingAdvances in artificial intelligence (AI) eventually could turbo-boost customer analytics to give companies speedier insights into individual buying patterns and a host of other consumer habits. Owing to fast development of information technologies (ITs), corporations are employed to enhance the capability of human resource management, which is called human resource information system (HRIS).