How Important Is It Support From Non It People?

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.

In order to leverage IT for the benefit of the whole organization enterprise architecture must be developed to oversee IT strategy. Centralizing IT strategy at the start of the new business strategies will be important to make sure IT and business are working together with common goals that deliver the most value. The following steps are to be completed within each department:

After reading many articles about Cloud Computing I saw the bright future for these types of cloud services. Aside from educating myself on this topic I feel that this could be beneficial to my fellow Computer Technology peers to address their client or employers cloud needs as well as people who are going to start a business and are looking at the options available to address their companies demands.

The communication between the IT department and the HR department is a key factor. This will keep everyone in the loop to what is going on. That allows the necessary changes to be made in the early stages instead of the later stages. This communication will help save the company time and money.

Cloud computing is a new technology that comes with both benefits and drawbacks and like any new tech it can be used to great success when paired with steps to mitigate the security issues it raises. Cloud computing has become somewhat of an ambiguous term often having different meaning for different people. An article in InfoWorld (2013) stated, ”Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT always needs: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any

As a result, the IS people weren’t a particularly happy lot...no one really had a great deal of respect for them.” (Brown & Vessey, 2001) This shows that business users were disconnected with their IT development counterparts and most often blamed IT for not doing enough to fix problems with the applications. They failed to realize that the problems they were seeing with their systems was due to the business users requesting a lot of adhoc changes to be made to the system without engaging proper change management

In the market today, business is showing growing interest to partner with IT to make sure they get the value for investing huge in technology. But, still there is a gap between the two departments and the IT folks think that they do not have enough support from the business to ensure the value is realized for the organization. A good example of deep integration of IT and business is the recent firing of the Apple maps chief. The ill-fated Apple maps was the failure of both the IT folks who couldn’t develop an efficient app for maps and also the business who couldn’t gather all the requirements and couldn’t manage the project to achieve the desired output. As a result, the Apple exec Richard Williamson was blamed and fired for the disastrous project and humiliation for the organization.

• Meet regularly with other departments’ heads- Sales- HR-Accounting-Marketing-Customer Service-Institutional trading-R&A-Client Services to communicate IT strategies and projects. Gather feedback from other departments regarding current needs. Be sure that all departments are aware of an IT strategy and that all future projects and initiatives must fall within this strategy.

Technical supports teams are vital in the current scenario but they can only be effective if carefully designed. According to Moreira (2003), effective teams can do jobs in short time and with fewer mistakes which ultimately enhance the productivity, increase the loyalty and higher the retention of the employees. It is the responsibility of the IT manager to build the support team and Moreira (2003) introduces four steps that are needed in this process.

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.

How effective is the collaboration between business and IT at Hefty Hardware? Determine the deficiency of both business and IT.

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.

All these factors are creating new challenges and new opportunities for businesses of all kinds and for the public sector. Adapting to the volatility and change is crucially dependent on, and in many cases driven by, IT. But to successfully meet these challenges and grasp these opportunities, you must focus on what you do best, not on becoming systems experts. Yet at the same time you must be 100 per cent certain that your IT support is efficient, cost effective and totally tuned to your needs.

• There is incompetence in communication and alignment between IT and business teams (Datasciencecentral.com, 2017).

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.