This case highlights a common pitfall of the technology race: When one company adopts a new high-tech system, its competitors are often tempted to follow suit without enough research and reasoning. But a change that is right for one company may be wrong for an other even another in the same industry. Be- fore Moulter invests in an automated recep tion system, he should figure out why Quality Care really needs it and what it can truly do for the company and its customers Despite the tone of the case, I suspect that Healthcare One and Medicenters have not in troduced their new automated reception sys tems solely to benefit their customers. It is more likely that their motivation came from a different source. For example, perhaps HealthCare One's back-office operations needed an overhaul The case doesn't go into such detail, but billing and client records may be a disaster area for the market leader. The company may well be turning to high tech out of desperation Medicenters, on the other hand, may be using the technology as part of a strategy to protect itself from losing market share. Its system may have been installed with the pri mary purpose of monitoring customers so that the company can better understand and meet their needs. Its managers know that in order to retain market share, Medicenters must grow as fast as the market grows. They also know that if Quality Care's market share grows, it will be at the expense of competi tors like Medicenters. The new system could be a defensive measure Either way, for HealthCare One and for Medicenters the "improved quality, customer benefits" positioning was probably an add-on. And either way, it doesn't matter. What mat ters is that each company probably did make sure that its new system's advantages would outweigh any disruption to the customers Moulter needs to do the same It seems that Quality Care's back-office oper m decent shape. If that is the case ations are then the company has time to experiment with the new technology's capabilities. Quality Care has the benefit of being able to observe two ex amples and an opportunity to use technology to create real value by starting from its own customers and then working back through the organization.