Survivor Term Paper

The major elements are cost efficiency, eliminating wastes, and researching future IT investments. In the IT Doesn’t Matter article, three main points were outlined, and they were spend less, follow, don’t lead, and focus on vulnerabilities, not opportunities. Overspending has always been a major issue in regards to applying new technology, and it is important to execute an IT budget for any organization. Office Depot adopted new technology to improve all of their operations, especially in the supply chain. They were able to increase efficiency, while modernizing their budget. Information technology can benefit any organization if they are researched thoroughly and will improve the business needs of the organization. If it will not improve the business needs, there is no need to invest in expensive technology. The most important phase in the system development life cycle is the systems analysis phase. The goal of this phase is to identify what problems need to be fixed and breaking down how the system will benefit all users. Therefore, the business needs need to be identified and outlined before new technology is adopted into an organization’s business model. Once new technology is applied, organizations must continue to research information technology. If organizations follow these elements of

The sheer volume of information of all types is ever increasing, making the job of IT manager more difficult. To remain competent, IT managers must keep up with the latest trends and new technologies. The evaluation of new technology is another skill related to information literacy, since the information describing such technology can take many forms. The best IT managers are highly skilled in such evaluations. These effective managers seem to be rare, as found in Li (2009). That study found that to deal with the difficulties of IT management, many organizations used encroachment, to save face for executives by simplifying and deflecting harmful results and analysis. This spreads the managerial blame and deals with the well documented fact (every computer science student is taught this) that over 60% of all technology projects fail and software development projects in particular fail even more frequently. The reasons for the failure of such projects include the incompetence of IT management (Toader et al., 2010). This is increasingly exemplified by the inability to communicate effectively with workers of foreign origin and incorrect evaluations of technology.

According to me (Srinivas), the audience of this paper would be organizations who are and want to implement IS/IT investments and the management and IS/IT students.

Making investment into IT requires precise valuation of the available resources and consideration of the potential risk associated with the success or failure of that specific project. IT involves both machines (which can be both hardware and software) and manpower in order to run those machines. In order to operate and implement the IT strategies the organization requires highly skilled

Copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America This chapter was originally published as chapter 1 of The Adventures of an IT Leader, copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the

The “IT Doesn’t Matter” article by Nicholas Carr, states an unrealistic view of the importance of IT in today corporate world. Carr tries to explain that due to the vast amount of advances in the technology field, IT has been rendered mundane. He states that IT has become as common place as a telephone or a typewriter before the beginning of the PC age. The article attempts to explains that due to the ability of most people to obtain computer systems that have capabilities that normal users will never need or use makes high end computers unable to provide the advantage that bigger companies once held over smaller ones.

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

IT by itself does not provide any value, however, the alignment of IT to strategic, operational, and cultural objectives provides business value. Thus, the CIO must ensure that any new investment in IT is for the sake of business objectives and not for “IT for ITs sake”. Ensuring business alignment against IT project delivery is critical, must be undertaken for any investment and is the key component of IT value.

The “IT alignment trap” occurs when IT spending is highly aligned with business strategic objectives, but IT is not effective in achieving those goals. IT and business priorities must be tightly linked. This means IT spending must be matched to growth strategies for the organization as a whole. Effective management of IT initiatives occurs when there is shared ownership and governance of IT projects. To avoid the “IT alignment trap”, IT needs to be both highly aligned with overall business strategic objectives and highly effective at helping achieve those goals.

- IT spending must be aligned with the company’s growth strategies (need to reduce IT costs i.e. savings on software licensing costs where bleeding money, and head count).

The effectiveness of the implementation of technology usually involves some important considerations by the organization. First, the management of the company needs to understand that new technologies or systems do not guarantee a one-size-fits-all solution to the existing problems experienced by the organization (Carcone, 2008). Secondly, the whole process of implementation incorporates the entire business process, customer service, pedagogic

Most organizations have a so many factors to consider when prioritizing IT projects. In reality, IT

In the end, the reasons for inclusion or exclusion of IT management stem from the same cause: the perception of the value of IT. IT management has been negatively perceived as selling a vision for business transformation that is IT myopic. However, when one considers the value of experience and the nature of change of technology, it is essential to have IT management involved as they are the enablers of technology.

In large organizations, all the three domains, projects, programs, and portfolios, have to meet the maturity standards. The IT portfolio plays high-level strategic roles by ensuring that project investments are being managed most appropriately. The main benefit of IT portfolio management is enabling measurement and objective evaluation of IT investments and alignment with the business strategy which will maximize the value of IT investments while minimizing risk. However, the ignoring of the IT portfolio management will impact negatively on the communication and alignment between IT and business leaders, which lead to the wrong distribution of the resources and budgets on projects

An organization under the course of change acts in response to the purposes and processes of the change either confidently or adversely, this paper will examine that how the change can be applied with the least deleterious impacts on the fundamental functions of the organization and how the positive impacts can be capitalized on for gainful business operations. The research will discuss the organization’s managers and leaders role in introducing the change with the introduction of information technology and communication, its direct impacts on the working style of the organization, opposition to the change, tools and techniques which they sue to neutralize the negative impacts of the change. It is obvious from the fitting-together opinions of the researchers who questioned about the change that organizational progress is concealed in the change but highly hooked on with the management of that change.