| Business Process Reengineering (BPR) | Restructuring and transforming a business process by a fundamental rethinking and redesign to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, speed, and so on.
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| Competitive Forces | A firm must confront (1) rivalry of competitors within its industry, (2) threats of new entrants, (3) threats of substitutes, (4) the bargaining power of customers, and (5) the bargaining power of suppliers.
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| Competitive Strategies | A firm can develop cost leadership, product differentiation, and business innovation strategies to confront its competitive forces.
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| Switching Costs | The costs in time, money, effort, and inconvenience that it would take a customer or supplier to switch its business to a firm’s competitors.
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| Locking In Customers and Suppliers | Building valuable relationships with customers and suppliers that deter them from abandoning a firm for its competitors or intimidating it into accepting less profitable relationships.
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| Strategic Information Systems | Information systems that provide a firm with competitive products and services that give it a strategic advantage over its competitors in the marketplace. Also, information systems that promote business innovation, improve business processes, and build strategic information resources for a firm.
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| Value Chain | Viewing a firm as a series, chain, or network of basic activities that adds value to its products and services and thus adds a margin of value to the firm.
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| Virtual Company | A form of organization that uses telecommunications networks and other information technologies to link the people, assets, and ideas of a variety of business partners, no matter where they may be, to exploit a business opportunity.
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