Delivering Business value with IT at Hefty Hardware

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.

We are undergraduate students in the course IT 396-44 Management Information Systems at Monroe College. Professor Asteria Villegas is the instructor for

At Tesco information technology is right at the heart of their business, as it’s essential for the business to run effectively and it also helps them improve their customers shopping experience by faster tills and stock checking systems. The use of IT is helping them to know what to sell, and also to help deliver the product to sell. Many different areas in Tesco put it to good use for example

This paper analyzes Rock Solid Industrial Parts, Inc. using the McKenzie 7-S Model to clarify some of the key issues facing the company today and also identify the key to success for the company in the next few years. The analysis concerns the elements of strategy, structure, systems, staff, skills, style, and shared values that are important to the organizational performance. Based on the analysis, some changes need to be made to align with company 's needs to achieve its business objectives. The analysis provides recommendations for the implementation of new modern IT solutions to accelerate the growth of the business. Rock Solid Industrial Parts, Inc. will move forward in the industry with IT solutions for their business needs.

Hefty Hardware Case Study has two main issues they were the communication gap between the business and IT departments. Due to this misunderstandings business department complained on IT department on taking long time on the project. After the analysis, there were two solutions provided to unwind the two problems. They are to inculcate unity in the teams in both departments by conducting training sessions which would help them to work together towards the goals of the organization. Other solution was to conduct effective communication sessions which would help the two departments in keeping pace with the current and past issues and helps them to understand what’s happening in the organization. In this way even the IT department can improve their

To fabricate an establishment so the IT and business divisions can grow a strong relationship, I would prescribe Hefty Hardware put resources into a continuous group building preparing program. Group building projects would enable the two groups to interface and bond together, fully. The advantage of a group-building program is that it would permit the current IT and business division faculty to construct a confiding in, useful, and agreeable condition utilizing group building works out (Baum, 2011).

The mini-case starts with “IT is a pain in the neck,” which is a wrong notion that most of the business managers have in an organization. The history of IT-business relationships in most of the organizations shows that there is a huge gap between both sides which is getting better over a period of time. Today, managers know the fact that it is the people, technology and information that realizes the value of a company and everytime IT cannot be blamed for everything. The days have gone when IT was looked at as the sole responsibility for a company’s growth or downfall. IT processes along with the

When considering the IT management portfolio triangle consisting of infrastructural, transactional, informational, and strategic systems in regards to the Nicholas Carr’s viewpoint on information technology, I do not believe that his thoughts apply equally to all types of IT investments. Consider most Transactional System IT investments undertaken today. These systems are designed to help streamline and standardize the collection, modification, and retrieval of transactional data within a business. These systems typically perform well, and maintain consistency and reliability. When observing only transactional systems, I would agree with Nicholas Carr and say that this type of IT investment

The role played by the IT in the company to the rest of the organization is reactive to business conditions rather than a proactive approach. IT has been busy establishing several IT processes, policies, and projects in order to catch up with current demand from customers, and has been relying on the “diving catch” approach of finishing things at the very last minute.

The current IT infrastructure is strong enough to meet the current operational needs of the organization, but is constructed with a combination of commercial-off-the-shelf hardware/software and home developed middleware with no comprehensive documentation available. Even though policy management, standardization and documented procedures needed a lot of work, there were some operational practices such as password management, business continuity, disaster recovery, and data backup and storage that seem to work. VTBC was able to continue processing orders if there was a failure in network conductivity. VTBC’s e-commerce applications were hosted outside of Vermont which gave them a position to capitalize on the nation’s internet infrastructure. There are seven veteran IT employees that possess a lot of the current working knowledge of the IT infrastructure and successful procedures but are limited in practical IT applications to make the infrastructure more efficient. With the implementation of various hardware and software applications, change control is not implemented or executed. Vermont Teddy Bear Company successfully operates three different product brands, using four different communication channels and but each of those channels is supported by different software. Vermont Teddy Bear Company utilized the “best of breed” approach for software acquisition. This method allowed the organization to

In this paper, the author will introduce a failure case of K-Mart 's IT modernization system project. In 2001, K-mart took $1.4 billion dollars into this project with the purpose of competing with its rival Walmart. The dream is beautiful, but the real work is cruel. After 18 months, the project was failed because of lacking of cash. What happened in the detailed for this project? $1.4 billion dollar is huge numbers, why it was still not enough to pay and distribute for this project? How did its project manager do in this project? What are the project problems? How can we learn from the failure of this case? The paper includes the case background introduction, the project development process, the problems in the project, analysis and

The partnership at Hefty Hardware between IT and the business is not effective. One of the core problems faced by Hefty Hardware was the lack of a productive, working relationship between the company’s IT and business divisions. The four building blocks needed for a foundation on which a solid relationship could be constructed; competence, credibility, interpersonal interactions, and trust, were not present between the two divisions (McKeen & Smith, 2012). The business division felt IT lacked competence when dealing with business needs, demonstrated by the IT department not having knowledge of Hefty Hardware’s basic business concerns, goals or processes.

In this part, I would analyze and demonstrate two key IT management frameworks (ITIL and COBITS) combine with what I have learned in this paper. The concept of IT Operations Management would be given associates to my personal view, and I would

Information Technology (IT): The hardware and software technologies a firm needs to achieve its business objectives (Kenneth C Laudon and Jane P Laudon., 2010).

Telecommunication industry is growing rapidly and currently United Enterprises representing the major part of Australia and Asian Pacific market. For continues business improvement need better services delivery which based on United Enterprises IT infrastructure. Currently United Enterprises running IT infrastructure that was end of life , and no longer be eligible for maintenance support by the hardware vendors, and it could be the high risk that if a failure happen desktop hardware and associated software application being completely unavailable for that extend period of time and possibly very high emergency additional cost .considered these IT issues recently United Enterprises CEO delivered the new strategy plan .which clearly identified the IT infrastructure issues. In strategy plan 2014-2015 outlines the IT infrastructure issues and aimed to improve the services delivery ,United enterprises will improve the IT operations and enhance the work efficiency through improve the operation in certain areas of Information technology ,under this plan they are interested to upgrade all the desktop hardware