MMT2 IT strategic solutionTask 4

Take in and implement better technologies immediately as soon as they have availability, regardless of whether or not there are organisations using them beforehand

Question #1: What would be your prioritized list of IT investments? Four IT investments need to be prioritized; 1. 2. 3. 4. Ecommerce & Web sales Aligning the various systems (legacy, SAP, ERP) together. Hire relationship managers Make IT a “partner”

The company is served by an IT infrastructure comprising of an amalgamation of off the shelf software and components and locally developed applications and middleware. The hardware infrastructure is by and large robust and capable of withstanding any current operational peaks. The infrastructure employs a high level of redundancy and good recovery and password management systems, so there is little risk of high business impact in the case of IT issues. No architecture document exists and minimal change control is executed.

ModMeters is proposing a major shift in its operations to a new market in order to meet new customers demands. ModMeters is looking to shift its focus by taking their operations to Eastern Europe and Asia. Because of these areas not already having existing technology infrastructure put into place, ModMeters is going to have to depend heavily on their IT department to pave the way and aid in this expansion. The head executives at ModMeters met to have a meeting about their planning process and how to allocate their IT budget. Expanding into these new markets and building the new operations will take significant amounts of time to develop correctly. These projects are something that require large amounts of capital and will not often show positive signs of return immediately, which is something that troubles the Stan Abrams. This project is giving ModMeters the chance to get their IT planning process in order and make sure it can encompass enough to work with their entire business.

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:

A1. Budget Concerns Competition Bikes budget has several areas of concern that need to be address. 1. Units expected to be sold for year nine is 3510. Competition Bikes is predicting that they will sell 3510 Bikes but they only sold 3400 Bikes in year eight down 15% from year seven 4000 units sold. Competitions Bikes has budget to high because the current economic down turn is showing no signs of relief for the next three years. Many of Competition Bikes customers are sponsored riders and many sponsors have pulled their funding to their rides. Competition Bikes has not presents a plan that would support their projections. Competition Bikes should lower there should lower the expected units sold so not to over order raw materials that will

Another weakness is seen on the limited space for expansion that is in the infrastructure. The current infrastructure can only accommodate 30 employees and even if there is the plan of growth by 20%, the space might not be adequate as growth normally necessitates a lot of space (Gupta & Jayaraman, 2010). This is because, there might be a need for a few offices and the current architecture might not be enough for the expansion and thus could delay the expansion.

Time is a risk for this project on several levels. 173 employees this will be affected as well as their customers. The company has agreed that this is a good move, however, if the process of setting up the equipment, managing the security and providing training goes on too long, then it will start to negatively affect the company over-all. Currently there is concern if the

planned expansion into the east coast. One of the threats identified was the vulnerability of the

internal and external users to whom access to the organization’s network, data or other sensitive

Phase 3 tasks 1 Components of technology systems Questions 1-4 for Group project, part 2:

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

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.

Such companies have to deal with multilayer transactions with different stakeholders like customers, merchants and banks. Improved IT infrastructure will help in enhancing the speed of the transactions and can improve the profit figures

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.