In a study of successful companies Treacy and Wiersema¹ identified the factors that gave companies leadership in their marketplace. They identified three types of strategic excellence. Each built on information processing to derive competitive advantage.

Operationally excellent companies ‘focus on delivering their products and services at competitive prices...’. These goals are achieved by efficient processes designed to operate at maximum volume with minimal friction. These companies typically structure themselves to apply their information handling capacity to the management and organisation of large scale.

Product Leadership organisations ‘offer leading edge products and services...’. To achieve this they are typically innovative, quick to market and use sophisticated processes. The products, although not necessarily complex in themselves, are the product of information intensive design and introduction processes designed to minimise time-to-market and maximise quality and reliability.

Customer Intimacy, is characterised by companies who ‘...tailor and shape products and services to fit an increasingly fine definition of the customer.’ They increase the diversity of the products and services they supply, and the amount of information they maintain about their customers. These companies have chosen to focus their attention and capacity on the management of diversity in their customers and products.

A common factor in the few companies that Treacy and Wiersema judged had mastered more than one discipline was their use of, and leadership in, the application of information technology to their business.

¹Treacy, M. and F. Wiersema (1993). Customer intimacy and other value disciplines. Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business School Publication Corp. 71: 84