Improving A Cutting Edge Technology Position

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.

Architecture must be developed in order to oversee IT strategy to benefit the whole organizational enterprise. 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:

The original business strategy, which is still not fully implemented or thought out, is still intact and being somewhat utilized. Part of getting from where we are now to where we want to go, is to put together a comprehensive business and growth strategy plan that, brings about the most results. The original business strategy resembled that of a small business that had the most growth with the least risk. With little risk also means little or no technology. The company has changed, the competition is more intense and the economy is weakened. A new strategy that aligns with technology is essential in order to be successful. As business and technology have become increasingly intertwined, the strategic alignment of the two has emerged as a major corporate issue. With the emergence of IT from the back room to the forefront of business brings the alignment issue under the spotlight like never before. And as

McKeen, James D; Smith, Heather (2012). IT strategy: Issues and practices (2nd ed.). Boston: Prentice Hall. Kindle Edition.

McKeen, J. and Heather, S. (2011) IT Strategy - Issues and Practices. 2nd Edition. ISBN-10: 0132145669. Boston: Prentice Hall.

The best strategic plan will never be fully achieved without alignment. This is because organizational alignment is one of the key determinants of successful strategy implementation. Each member of the company must know their job and that they can rely on their leaders, training, equipment, and the technique, skills, and commitment of their coworkers. When cohesion and alignment is off, the company goes off course, wastes time, energy, and the resources that were invested (Rick, 2014).

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.

To be strategically aligned with the market and an organization needs to be customer driven, not organizationally driven. All functions of an organization need to be aligned internally and with each other. Because “structure plays a powerful role in creating a market driven organization” (Day 1999, p.208) it has become imperative for it to be a major focus of the business model. The organization structure effects relational outcomes (customer satisfaction and loyalty) and brand equity (Lee, Kozlenkova, & Palmatier, 2015, p. 95). Forbes.com writer Joseph George said it best, “perfect alignment on a sub-optimal strategy will likely be more successful than sub-optimal alignment on a perfect strategy. Alignment is the key ingredient to success, because without it, the most perfect strategy in the world will never come to fruition (2014). Wooden (2005) describes one of the building blocks of success and leadership is cooperation, being interested in finding the best way, not having your own way (Wooden & Jamison, 2005, p. 29).

The fascination with IT-enabled business innovation comes at a time of significant uncertainty and change as entrenched players and new entrants struggle to define a sustainable proprietary position for success in the turbulent twenty-first century. While most agree that Internet-based technologies have progressed at lightning speed since they were introduced to the business world in the early to mid-1990s, developing common standards and robust commercial technologies usually takes time. The challenge of integrating new technologies into the "legacy" of computers, networks, and systems already in place within companies adds to the problem. To achieve the

IT alignment is crucial for the growth of businesses and in the case of Volkswagen with several independent units, the alignment of their business with IT is more needed. This is because with the implementation of IT, it would be more conducive for Volkswagen to record and comprehend sales figures. Also the communication between these units is needed as they are not integrated throughout the enterprise so a technology based communication platform is required to align their business strategies. This alignment was achieved to some extent by the establishment of the Business Process, Technology and Organization (BPTO) which was an internal IT department to manage and prioritize IT projects in coordination with the IT steering committee (ITSC) which comprised of senior business and IT representative to guide the approval of the process. I feel that the workshop conducted by the

Strategic management is an approach to help leaders forecast the direction of their organization. This approach helps organizational leaders gauge the quality of its services, products, and/or internal systems by performing internal and external audits. These audits help leaders identify the internal strengths and weakness, and the external threats and opportunities (SWOT) within a given market. This analytic framework helps leaders forecast contingencies and help leaders develop strategies to create value for key stakeholders, such as an organization’s employees. Since, strategic management is a cross-functional approach organizational alignment is imperative to an organization’s sustainability. Let’s apply the strategic management

Technology firms generally perform three important and inter-related activities: strategy, planning, and operations, each having a different intent and time horizon. The function of strategy, which has a time horizon of years, is, in general, to set the long-term direction or

This Case study takes into examination a firm that had a very successful IT-driven strategy to satisfy customer needs. This company used this strategy to double its desired goal and even quadruple its goals. For this case analysis, a number of factors will be discussed.

There has been a steady increasing growth in the technology world. Businesses have had to strategically position themselves in a way that they are able to adapt with the growing and changing technology to cope in the highly competitive environment. Many business ventures in the market place use state of the art information technologies. All businesses need to develop ways in which to take advantage of the opportunities created by the growing technology.

For organizations to be successful it needs to have a great tight-knit alignment between its structure and strategy. One can describe an organization’s strategy as the business plan that illustrates how an organization will produce products and provide services to customers and overall how it will run the business. It is also described as specific plans of actions aimed to reach specific goals and maintain good relationships with clients and customers. Organization Strategy can best be described as the precise pieces of an organization that are perfectly suitable internally. For an organization to proceed with their plans their structure and strategy have to work together like a clock. It is vital for an organization