Volkswagen Of America

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.

Key Issues At NAF, delivering value with IT is about more than delivering projects on time and on budget or having a good IT development shop. They have all this but theres still not enough value getting delivered. This case explores the questions of who is responsible for delivering value with IT and when IT value is delivered. It emphasizes that value delivery should be a business-IT partnership responsibility and will require change in the business over time. The first part of this case looks at the relationship between business strategy and IT development projects. It makes it clear that enterprise business strategies need enterprise solutions and a procedure for matching these. It also introduces the concept that investing in IT

The value chain, made by Michael Porter, is really important to see how a company structure is created. The value chain is constituted by two parts: support activities (firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, procurement) and primary activities (inbound logistic, operations, outbound logistic, marketing and sales, service). (Johnson et al. 2011, p.97-99)

Under Mike Porter’s Value Chain analysis every organization has primary activities and support activities. Primary activities are inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and customer service. Support activities are infrastructure, human resource management, technological development, and procurement. For a conglomerate like Disney creating value is done by leveraging all the outputs of its various segments to benefit the others.

The automotive industry globally involves the processes of manufacturing as well as sales of cars and other automobiles. The business of this industry is also inclusive of retailing activities like services; sale of spare parts, gas-station retails etc. by the year 2015, and the growth rate of the industry is expected to have a rise of 5.5% (Market Line, 2012). Moreover, as per International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, this industry is the leading driver in terms of global economic progress and the largest employer. The changing trends and rising demand for technically advanced cars are giving out more opportunities. This essay is going to be a presentation on the analysis of the Volkswagen positioning strategy with respect to the Porters models of competitive strategies. This essay would be vital, as this analysis would help in revealing the company’s competitive and strategic position in the industry.

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

When the CEO launches two new strategic initiatives requiring integration across all business units, the organization – whose IT decisions have been largely delegated to its business units in proportion to their revenue generating capacity – now faces the dilemma of how to prioritize its IT projects in order to support the new strategic “enterprise” vision.

According to the value chain analysis, a business adds value to its products or services through a series of activities it performs within the company. First, the primary value activities describe the production, the selling, and after-sales support for its products and services. Second, the support value activities describe all business functions needed to provide the human resource, the technology, the infrastructure, and the supplies (Baltzan, 2012). EG Inc. coordinates all its value-adding activities using an MIS infrastructure, comprising of a supply chain management (SCM) system, customer relationship management (CRM) system, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and as a result increases productivity, reduces cost, optimizes business operations, generates growth, and increases profitability (Baltzan,

William Crapo Durant established largest automobile manufacturer in the world, General Motors, in 1908 to produce "Buick automobiles". In the first year of the company, GM had satisfying sales rates and in the advancing years the company merged with other companies, such as Cadillac, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and AC Sparks Plugs. Amalgamation with other companies increased its sales and GM continued to merge with Chevrolet, Vauxhall Motors of Great Britain, Hummer, Isuzu, GMC, Holden and Opel (Flesher et al., 2014). General Motors is a manufacturing company specialising in cars, trucks, automobile parts. GM has more than 205,000 employees in 157 countries and is headquartered in Detroit, the USA. It has five different

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.

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

This portfolio focus on what I have learned during the whole IT Strategy and Control paper, a critical reflection of this paper would be provided. This reflection includes the key points, support reference and the demonstration of my own understanding about the paper itself and all of my personal understandings are based on the learning outcome of this paper. In the first part of this portfolio, I would discuss all the key IT Operations Management framework which have been introduced in the paper, the analysis of the processes based on my own understanding would be given. In the second part, analyze processes required for aligning IT infrastructure and operations with the business goals of an organization would be talked about, and I would focus a business organization which has been mentioned in the caselets as a sample. In the third part, some critical evaluate operational IT organizations and their processes against the studied models would be listed and analyzed. In the last part, the recommendations and analysis of my own would be given against those organizations (caselets) which have some problems and current issues arising from the implementation of the IT framework.

The Activities within the organization add values to the services and products that the organization produces, and all the activities that should be running at an optimum level if the organization wants to gain real competitive advantage in the market. HP has the value chain has been classified into two, based upon its functions

Information Technology (IT) budgeting has become a constant struggle for companies, both big and small. The speed at which technology becomes obsolete, management’s expectations for quick deployment of new technology, and a supplier’s change of their operating model to focus on “as-a-service” (Feldman, 2015) recurring revenue, greatly affect how IT departments approach their budget these days. Other factors such as; lack of company vision or one’s inability to see how their IT department fits into the corporation’s goals and expectations are all huge pitfalls for the IT manager. The inability for IT and finance divisions to

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.