1999 Reports

Retail banking: Sanwa Bank: Sustaining long-term advantage through information technology

Rapp, William V.

This retail banking case together with other cases3 support an initial research hypothesis that leading software users in the US and Japan are very sophisticated in the ways they have integrated software into their management strategies and use it to institutionalize organizational strengths and capture tacit knowledge on an iterative basis. In Japan this strategy has involved heavy reliance on customized and semi-customized software (Rapp 1995) but is changing towards a more selective use of package software managed via customized systems. In turn, US firms, such as Merck, who have often relied more on packaged software, are doing more customization, especially for systems needed to integrate software packages into something more closely linked with its business strategies, markets, and organizational structure. Thus, coming from different directions, there appears to be some convergence in approach by these leading software users. The cases thus confirm what some other analysts have hypothesized; a coherent business strategy is a necessary condition for a successful information technology strategy (Wold and Shriver 1993). These strategic links for Sanwa are presented in the following case.