INF80045 Strategic Value Of Business Technology

In this digital era, the emergent technologies are considered to be the most valuable assets or components of the organizations operating in various industries. There is a wide range of emergent technologies in the current markets, which are useful for strengthening the strategic aim and priority of various organizations. These technologies are being proved to be more and more important to the business model of the organization. In this report, we'll assess two such emergent technologies ValIT and COBIT in terms of their effect on the strategic priorities of the organization implementing them. The report focuses on the assessment of these technologies for the ‘Oracle’, a giant organization in the information and technology industry. The report assesses these technologies based on a number of factors and perspectives along with a brief comparison with the industry standards (Mohanan, 2016).

This section of the report assesses the IT frameworks, ValIT and COBIT in terms of their support to the strategic priorities of the organizations. These technologies are also assessed in terms of their contribution towards enhancing the business value of the organization. Both of these technologies are developed by ISACA and the IT governance institute. Both of these technologies are designed to support the business executives, management personnel, and IT stakeholders to efficiently manage the IT systems and processes (Moeller, 2013).

Initially, the name ‘COBIT' was an acronym for ‘Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology’, which was dropped a couple of years back. COBIT focuses on the management of the implementation and development activities of the IT systems along with risk analysis.

• One of the major purposes of COBIT is to provide the maximum value to the business executives and managerial personnel, out of the IT business processes and systems. Oracle can utilize the guidelines and best practices provided by COBIT to maximize the utilization of their IT systems and processes implemented in the organization. This, in turn, allows the organization to be in line with its strategic priority of having the maximum performance and efficiency out of all the IT processes and systems (Pereira, 2015).
• Another important purpose of COBIT is to allow the management personnel to figure out how the business operations of the organizations can utilize the IT systems efficiently. This, in turn, allows each of the business operations to be associated with corresponding ITC component. This allows the effective combination of IT business processes and IT systems to be implemented in the workplace of the organization, which, in turn, is in line with the strategic priority of the organization to achieve better performance and efficiency (Nugroho, 2014).
• COBIT also contributes towards the audit procedures of Oracle, which includes best practices and guidelines along with the criteria on which the IT systems should be implemented in the workplace of the organization. The private and public standards implemented by various regulatory bodies based on the guidelines provided in COBIT are quite useful for the auditors to carry out the audit process. This, in turn, allows the managerial personnel in Oracle to maintain IT governance in the workplace of the organization along with the business and operational model of the organization, which is in line with the strategic objectives of the organization (Weber, 2014).
• COBIT also provides features to effectively manage the control requirements and technical issues in order to stay in compliance. So this compliance and governance module of COBIT allows the business stakeholders of Oracle to stay in compliance with the public and private standards, which in turn is in line with the business and strategic objectives of the organization (Bahsani, 2015).

ValIT is an IT framework that allows the business executives of an organization in taking an investment decision in any of the IT systems or processes. This emergent technology comes in aid of the top executives and managerial personnel of the organization to a significant extent. The framework provides a detailed overview of the business value generated from any of the investments in the IT systems or processes. This, in turn, allows the business executives of the organization to take effective and efficient business decisions by focusing on the value management principles and guidelines while making an investment.

• This emergent technology helps the business executives of the organization with the portfolio of investments, which in turn contributes to the critical business decision-making process of the organization. The business decision of making an investment in an IT system and process is supported by this IT framework, which in turn allows the organization to stay true to its strategic objectives.
• This emergent technology enables the business executives to have an overview of all the activities involved in an IT-enabled investment. This, in turn, allows the business executives to determine the total value generated to the business due to the investment. This information can be used by the business executives to maintain their strategic priorities and objectives by taking effective and efficient business decisions (Laita, 2017).
• This framework provides a set of best practices to the business executives of the organization in relation to the IT-enabled investments. These best practices can be followed by the business executives of the organization to ensure the creation of maximum values to the business of the organisation.
• As part of a feature of this framework, each of the stakeholders of the organization will be assigned a certain amount of accountability for the investments in various IT systems and processes. Such a system of accountability allows each of the stakeholders and shareholders to maintain the strategic priority of the organization.
• This IT framework also monitors some of the key metrics of the IT-enabled investments of the organization, which in turn provides an overview of the performance of the IT implementations in the organization. This also allows the business executives to have real-time information regarding the IT investments of the organization and allows the organization to maintain its strategic priorities (Nisrina, 2016).

As discussed in the previous section, the emergent technologies allow the organizations to manage the IT systems and processes efficiently. Both the IT frameworks COBIT and ValIT are responsible for achieving a strong direction to maintain the strategic priorities of the organisation. As mentioned earlier, COBIT yields a lot of business values by allowing the business executives to take efficient business decisions regarding the implementation and development of the IT systems and processes in the business model of the organization. The utilization of COBIT allows the development and maintenance activities of the IT systems of the organization to be managed efficiently (Rotunno, 2015). This, in turn, allows the business executives to develop better plans and policies for the organization. The implementation of these plans and policies allows the organization to yield better value for its business. The guidelines and best practices mentioned in COBIT also allows the managerial personnel in the organization to carry out effective audits, which in turn allows the business operations of the organization generate more value for the business of the organization (Mushtaque, 2014).

As mentioned in the previous section, ValIT is an IT framework implementation for the decision making processes of the business executives for the IT-enabled investments of the organization. The best practices and guidelines provided by ValIT allows the business executives of the organization to ensure that the IT-enabled investments of the organization are effective and efficient. Such efficient decisions of the business executives for the IT-enabled investments allows more values to be created for the business (Bartens, 2015).

The previous sections of the report assessed the effects of the emergent technologies on the business and operational processes of the organizations. The two frameworks in focus throughout the report were COBIT and ValIT, both of which allow the business executives of an organization to manage the IT processes and systems of the organization in a better way. This section of the report mentioned a couple of recommendations for the business executives of Oracle in terms of the framework, which should be implemented in the workplace in order to gain the most value out of it. Oracle should focus on implementing COBIT in its workplace in order to yield the most value out of the emergent technologies available currently in the market.

• COBIT provides an effective set of guidelines and best practices for the efficient management and maintenance of the existing IT systems and processes in the workplace. These guidelines and best practices can be used in the workplace of Oracle to achieve a better quality and performance of the IT operational activities (Lombardi, 2016).
• COBIT can be used by the business executives of Oracle to harmonize the frameworks already implemented in the workplace of the organization. Such a harmonization of the frameworks in the workplace of the organization will lead to better performance of the IT business model along with a strengthened operational model (Kerr, 2013).
• The implementation of COBIT will also allow the business executives to maintain a good level of governance in the workplace of the organization. The maintenance of high quality of compliance and governance in the workplace of Oracle allows the business executives to create a high quality and employee-friendly workplace. This, in turn, will positively affect the performance of the individual employees in the workplace of the organization.
• The implementation of COBIT will also allow the business executives to clearly define the goals and responsibilities of each of the individual employees in the workplace. This also allows each of the employees to be clear about the activities and roles of each other. Such a situation in the workplace of the organization allows the organization to have a high level of harmony in the workplace, which leads to high performance (Grunwald, 2015).

The implementation of ValIT also helps the business executives to yield a lot of business value for the organization. This section of the report also mentions a brief overview of the benefits of implementing ValIT in the workplace of Oracle.

• The implementation of ValIT allows the business executives in Oracle to have a clear and efficient decision-making process for the investments in any of the IT systems and processes.
• The clear and efficient decision-making process also allows the business executives to maintain high performance and effective utilization of the resources in the workplace of the organization (De Haes, 2013).

The report clearly introduces the effects of the emergent information technologies on the business model and operational efficiency of an organization. The report also mentioned a couple of emergent technological frameworks such as COBIT and ValIT, which are being used in various organizations across the current industries. Then the report gave a fair overview regarding both the frameworks in focus. COBIT allows the business executives of an organization to efficiently manage the implementation and developmental activities of the IT systems and processes of an organisation. Whereas ValIT supports the business executives of an organization to make efficient business decisions regarding the investments in various IT systems and processes. After the brief comparison of both the IT frameworks, the report provided a couple of recommendations to the higher management of Oracle. According to the report, the higher management of Oracle should focus on the implementation of COBIT in the workplace and business model, which will ensure the most value addition to the business of the organization. The report also provides a number of recommendations for the implementation of COBIT in the workplace of Oracle along with possible business cases (Poorebrahimi, 2016).

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