Information Systems and Management of Most Organizations - Essay Example

?Strategic Role of Technology in Spotify. ID: of Seminar: Word Count: 2091 Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Executive summary3 Introduction 4 SPOTIFY TM 4 Recommendations 9 Conclusion 10 Bibliography 11 Executive summary This report aims at illustrating the importance of information systems to organizations. Every organization has business and strategic goals that it wishes to achieve (McCrohan & Harvey, 2008). This report gives illustrative information on how organizations can use information systems to their advantage. It gives details on how Spotify uses information system in enhancing its competitive nature in the ever-changing information needs of the current world. The report bases its arguments on research information from various sources. Moreover, the report provides various recommendations about the topic. These recommendations are relevant to any company that considers information systems significant in their operations. Introduction Spotify TM is a music service company that streams music to its customers through desktop and mobile phone. The company has a vast database with millions of songs that millions of subscribers can listen to from the internet. Currently, the company has more than 20 million users. Its services are mostly available to European countries (Li, Peters, Richardson & Weidenmier, 2012). It has been able to maintain its market in the competitive music business due to its competitive nature. The company also uses strategic measures that have been able to keep the company running. Its key technique has been the use of information systems that are strong enough to sustain the business plan of the corporation. This report formulates and evaluates the company’s strategy and frameworks in maintaining their business. It also discusses theoretical perspectives on how the company uses technology to build a competitive advantage for its sustainability. Moreover, the report also provides recommendations that the company can adopt to enhance its business. The company allows one to buy a spotify software program that users can use to stream music from a huge collection of music, and tracks (Lashley, & Clark 2013). Users stream this music using their computers, mobile phones, and tablets. The need exists for one to download the music he listens to, but only entails streaming the music. SPOTIFY TM All companies have business strategies of which state their goals. Business strategies state methods through which they will be able to attain the set goals. Spotify TM has been able to implement various models by Michael Porter in achieving its goals. Spotify TM uses information systems to its advantage in using the five forces model. For instance, the company’s uses an interactive website that provides easy navigation by a subscriber on the internet (Rice, 2010). The website arranges its content in a good way that makes the content well visible. The font that the website uses is attractive and makes it easy for a subscriber to view things clearly. Therefore, subscribers become loyal as the company provides better services to its customers. This aspect has been able to create a barrier to new companies from entering into the market (Jenkins, Leicht & Jaynes, 2008). In addition, users can browse music by record label, album, genre, playlist, artists, and through direct searches. With a better website that provides quick services to its customers, the company has been able to lower its charges to its subscribers. It also provides a free six-month trial period once one creates an account. This is due to the increase of subscribers to the company’s services. This creates a buyer power that helps the company to maintain its companies. There are also wide alternatives that customers can choose from in their subscription plans. Hence, the company has a wide range of customers that can subscribe to its services. The company allows one to listen to an unlimited number of music that supports radio-style advertising that the company removes once one subscribes fully. Spotify’s supply power is also high because its technological advancements has allowed the company to create a massive database with virtually all music in the market. The availability of a variety of music gives subscribers a wide range of choices (Banabakova & Panev, 2011). His creates satisfaction among its subscribers. Spotify has been able to maintain its market by providing services that prevent its customers from seeking substitute service providers. Its system also ensures that a subscriber can save his list of preferences. Therefore, the subscriber can quickly access his music on the site. Moreover, one can also save their playlists on the site and access them back at any time. One shares these playlists with friends by dragging them into emails. This is appealing to the subscribers. Rival companies have been unable to meet the services Spotify provide. The pricing of their services has been relatively low when compared to that of its rivals (Rice, 2010). Moreover, it provides several subscription offers that include free, unlimited, and premium. The use of apps that recommend music to listeners according to their listening history makes the experience interesting. The company uses Porter’s generic strategies to change the basis of its competition. Its pricing is friendly to most subscribers through the ability to lower its prices to powerful buyers. The unlimited subscription is available at US$9.99, which is relatively cheaper than most music sites. Differentiation has helped the company to provide services to its customers by using various subscription options (Micek, 2012). This makes customers attached to differentiating attributes thus reducing the threat of substitutes. This also creates brand loyalty among its subscribers. The company’s focus on subscriber satisfaction discourages rivals from taking their customers and reduces chances of customers seeking substitutes. Moreover, Spotify is aware of competition in the market. Hence, it uses the hypercompetition model that allows the company to focus on speed and aggressiveness in the market. The company attains this by the use of clear and basic offers in their accounts. Advanced features are available in the premium account thus anyone can still access the music (Excellence and the IT factor, 2013). The US$10 per month fee for its unlimited account is cheap to its customers. This attracts customers to the company. These features are also available through mobile clients that include iOS, Android, and blackberry devices. Spotify’s prime dependency on technology helps it to attain its business strategies. The company introduced technological features that are appealing to its customers. The use of a catalog has been useful. This provides access to more than 20 million songs that one can search using album, artist, and genres. It uses synchronizing technique, which allows one to import songs to iTunes that are not available at spotify (Excellence and the IT factor, 2013). Additionally, one can also download favorite trucks because the company collaborated with 7digitals. Creating, editing, and sharing of playlists is an essential feature (Excellence and the IT factor, 2013). Therefore, users can send music from Spotify to their accounts in Last.fm. This feature allows one to find out which songs he listens to most often. Hence, users can add a link from Spotify in their Last.fm account and share them with Spotify subscribers with Lastify app. This integration allows Spotify to recommend songs to users with respect to their listening history. Spotify uses a radio feature available to all accounts that create a random playlist by choosing songs according to specific genres. For instance, this feature can create a random playlist of songs by a certain artist. It also provides information about the artist. Moreover, it also provides information on best songs by the artist (Rice, 2010. This feature is strategically competitive and develops the goals of the company as more subscribers enjoy the services. Spotify integrates user’s Facebook and Twitter accounts that allow one to access the playlists and music of their friends. In addition, users can share music with their Facebook friends using a service’s inbox. Users can send their playlists to friends. Friends can access this music with their Spotify account (McCrohan & Harvey, 2008). Facebook provides feeds to one’s friends of the music that one listens. The feature has a button that immediately plays the song from Spotify once one clicks hit. One can also log into their Spotify accounts using their facebook details making it easy to access Spotify. There are also applications that users can use to access Spotify features. The Spotify desktop client has an app that uses HTML5 reliable (Banabakova & Panev, 2011). These features allow one to share, and review songs and lyrics. The features include Fuse, Billboard, Last.fm, Moodagent, Rolling Stone, We Are Hunted, Soundrop, and Tunewiki. Spotify summarizes client’s information and saves on the Spotify stream hub once one connects to the service. Spotify uses this information by letting clients know about peers they can connect. This would allow them fetch data about tracks that are currently playing. This feature significantly improves the performance of the company. Moreover, the company introduced a web browser version of its software that uses Adobe Flash. This service is mostly available to peer-to-peer networks. The company uses a decentralized architecture to provide services to its subscribers. Therefore, processing and functionality take place in multiple computers that include their dedicated servers and the client’s desktops. This architecture is effective in its working, as it supports the processes Spotify ventures in. Cloud computing has been crucial infrastructure in implementing the decentralized architecture (Oss & Mackie, 2001). The strategy of the company drives its architecture and infrastructure. This is because the goals of a strategic business always provide the blue print for the components of the infrastructure. The company uses always anticipates for new technologies that would help enhance its activities in attaining their strategic goals. For, instance, Spotify embraced Despotify that allows one to access the services of Spotify. This is an open source software that requires a Premium subscription with Spotify (Lashley & Clark, 2013). The software provides access to third party individuals to access its services. This service runs on mainstream operating systems that are compliant with POSIX. These operating systems have an ANSI C compiler. These techniques have been able to enable Spotify to acquire many customers to their services. They have also been able to retain these customers since they embrace new and engaging technologies that come up with time. This is through the prime use of channels that are reliable (Banabakova & Panev, 2011). Spotify records information of how their clients use Spotify services. This helps the company to know their progress and correct issues that make users shun from the service. This is possible with various techniques that include recording visits, analyzing results of promotions, and generating their website traffic. Recommendations Spotify has made tremendous steps in improving the experience of music lovers in the internet. However, there are measures that the corporation needs to take in order to succeed. Spotify needs to increase its simplicity and ease of their services for it to succeed more. One does not need to visit more than ten places in order to meet his musical needs. This would be a driving force for the millions of clients in the service. With a single location for selecting music, it would be easy for a client to access all the songs they need. The company does not provide the free version on the smart phone application. This has been because of licensing reasons. The current world has embraced the use of smart phones. Most people consider smart phones to be the devices. Therefore, Spotify is losing a lot of money by the fact that they have not been able to provide the services. In addition, Spotify does not allow users to download music to their mp3 players. There are also advertisements that come between songs that are rather boring to the clients. However, these advertisements are not there in unlimited and premium accounts. The advertisements are irritating to users when they pop up. This discourages potential subscribers in using the software hence a limitation to the full potential of the company. Conclusion Information systems are extremely crucial to any organization’s progress (Scott, 2001). It implements developing technologies to the management and running of most organizations in the current world. Most companies have been able to gain a lot of profit with proper information systems. These systems maximize the activities that aim at achieving the goals of the organization. Information systems make it easy for companies to monitor employees, client’s data, and to coordinate various activities. Organizations that use better information systems gain a good competitive advantage over their competitors just like Spotify. Bibliography Banabakova, V, & Panev, A 2011, 'characteristics of business information systems and their importance for the improvement of logistical service', Revista Academiei Fortelor Terestre, 16, 4, pp. 413-417, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 21 March 2013. 'Excellence and the IT factor: information technology inside excellent companies in Britain' 1990, Journal Of Information Technology (Routledge, Ltd.), 5, 1, p. 41, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 21 March 2013. 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