Addressing Business And It Alignment For Future Business Success

The purpose of this article is to illuminate the need for any organization to have its IT strategy and business strategy properly aligned. While many organizations view IT and business alignment as an event – it is actually an on-going process, or continuous journey. Therefore, the main problem is that many organizations of today still hold these two principles (business mission & IT strategy) as two separate entities. However, in the Information Age – collaboration is key to capturing and retaining market penetration. To not have alignment with the IT and business strategy together is not a matter of want it is a matter of survival. This report will expand upon the need for business and IT strategic alignment as well as examine what happens in lack of a comprehensive plan. This will be done by examining the Vermont Teddy Bear company prior to and after the arrival of Bob Stetzel, the Vice President of Information Technology. This document will view it findings and make recommendations on the immediate and future operations of the company.

Factors Increasing the Value of IT Investments Weill and Broadbent studied firms that "Consistently achieve more business value for their information technology investment." This study noted that these organizations were excellent or above average in five characteristics: Commitment to the strategic and effective application of IT. This commitment was wide known within each organization.

It has become progressively more documented that information is the most important strategic resource that any organization has to deal with. Key to the compilation, analysis, production and allocation of information within an organization is the quality of IT services provided to the business. It is necessary that it is recognized that IT services are vital, strategic, organizational assets and consequently organizations must invest suitable levels of resources into the support, delivery and management of these vital IT services and the IT systems that support them. The challenges for IT managers are to co-ordinate and work in collaboration with the businesses to deliver high quality IT services. This has to be accomplished while adopting a more business and customer oriented approach to delivering services and cost optimization (Cartlidge, Hanna, Rudd, Macfarlane, Windebank & Rance, 2007).

In my analysis of the case Volkswagen of America: Managing IT Priorities (Austin, 2007), I will examine the dilemma faced by the Digital Business Council (DBC) members with respect to recommendations to the IT steering committee (ITSC) and the CIO, Dr. Uwe Matulovic. I will analyze two alternatives and the unfunded project, and provide recommendations.

These types of investments are where I would disagree most with Carr’s viewpoint regarding the commoditization of IT in business. The pure reason for such an IT investment is to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. This can be accomplished in a number of ways starting with the overall infrastructure makeup of the IT, all the way to the capabilities and skills of the IT users. The IT itself can be highly complex and customized for a specialized field, making the barrier to entry for competitors quite high. Conversely, the organization can essentially wed its consumers to the organization by offering a variety of useful services to which they can leverage to make the switching costs to another competitor(s) extremely high. Moreover, having a highly knowledgeable and skilled IT workforce can also increase competitive advantage for the organization by finding new ways to leverage their IT against their competitors which is extremely hard to replicate. One example of this type of system was discussed in the case regarding Cardinal Health. Cardinal Health’s expert knowledge and leveraged use of data warehousing, integrated with SAP R/3, to successfully implement an advanced business intelligence platform created a noticeable competitive advantage within their industry. Going further, it also set precedent for what other competing firms would have to strive for. They did so well, I would

Business–information technology alignment is the tight integration of the IT function with the organization’s strategy, mission, and goals. That is, the IT function directly supports the business objectives of the organization. Such an alignment enables firms to adhere to business objectives, and to maximize the value from investments. An excellent alignment will reduce costs, standardize processes, enhance productivity, improve workflow and communications, sustain repeatable service levels, improve Risk control mechanisms, implement new business strategies, facilitate growth, facilitate competitive advantage by exploiting new technology, enable IT driven projects to meet time and budget requirements, help to optimize the IT budget utilization. As more and more new business opportunities are created, IT plays an

This ought to be finished by a joint IT-business group and ought to address the main drivers of the issues being experienced. The joint group should then figure out what business procedure changes and what framework changes will be required so as to accomplish the venture's utilitarian targets. This group will likewise figure out what advantages ought to be accomplished with the reexamined task, including expense reserve funds and new abilities on which promote usefulness could be constructed. The finished expenses and advantages ought to be displayed to a TUFS directing advisory group, comprising of the CFO, the CIO, and the important business officials. Together, they have to concede to what should be finished. The whole business-IT group ought to then be considered responsible for conveying on this arrangement – both expenses and

Efficiency—IT infrastructure resources are pooled and shared across large numbers of applications and organizations, reducing duplication and mitigating costs. It can complement data center consolidation efforts, reducing fragmented data, application, and infrastructure silo issues.

Information Technology (IT) is a foundation for conducting business today. It plays a critical role in increasing productivity of firms and entire nation. It is proven that firms who invested in IT have experienced continued growth in productivity and efficiency. Many companies' survival and even existence without use of IT is unimaginable. IT has become the largest component of capital investment for companies in the United States and many other countries.

Alignment of an enterprise’s goals with its IT1 and IS1 systems has been a challenge ever since IT became a business enabler. Proposing an IT alignment requires a thorough understanding of the business goals of the enterprise and the knowledge that alignment is an iterative process which requires constant measurement and honing (Chan, 2002). Enterprises often face the problem of balance of priorities between IT and Business objectives. This report deals with one such case that faced alignment and prioritization hardships resulting in an unclear approach to achieve a corporate strategy.

IT-Business alignment is the relationship between IT-professionals and the body of the company that is the business professionals. IT-Business alignment involves effective communication and the ability of business and IT professionals to work together within an organization to achieve the objectives of the company. This alignment is most successful when the postures of IT and the rest of the company are on the same page. An example of good IT-business alignment would be a companies IT professionals working together with Business professionals in order to reach a common goal and sharing ideas and working towards accomplishing them. The development of Boston Scientific’s datacenter were a result of good IT-Business alignment as a result from aligning their postures to collaborate. They had IT-Professionals working directly with heads of the facilities in order optimize the datacenter location. This created a renowned industry standard for sustainable datacenter design. Poor IT-Business alignment or misalignment is a company hiring consultants to come in and perform work you have a department to do. This makes current employees feel undervalued and creates a poor work environment. Your not only wasting money on hiring outsiders but you miss the chance to develop a stronger solution to a problem that is created from within, but then can be built better and worked on from the creators.

This analysis will discuss what issues an IT Department faces within the each company, as well as dive deeply into what productivity paradox is and whether companies under or over invest. This analysis will then close with a few methods on how to battle the ever-challenging productivity paradox.

ITIL also provides to make sound business decisions on investment, cost optimisation, management of risks.

IT organizations should become enterprising, on the contrary of waiting for the business to claim needed IT capabilities, IT organizations offer the enterprise services, which will lead the whole system into something more efficiency.

Frenzel (2004) claimed that to be successful, a firm’s IT management team must take action on the following critical areas: business management issues; strategic and competitive issues; planning and implementation concerns; and operational items. If for any reason, the organisation experiences difficulties in the above areas, the manager will need to set goals and objectives to overcome and prevent these issues.