Developing A Cohesive And Integrated IT Strategy: Challenges And Benefits

IT Strategic Planning

Question:

Write a research essay based on review of relevant literature and case studies on one of the following topics:

Compare and contrast the value of developing a cohesive and integrated IT Strategy that exploits the capabilities of emerging IT instead of a strategy for every potentially useful emerging IT. 

Managers are recognizing the increasing requirements of the organizations in order to develop skills and knowledge to compete in the international markets. IT strategic planning is a prepared process when an organization builds a document points out the way it plans to development from the existing situation towards the future circumstances (Rotolo et al. 2016). The organizations face key challenges while developing their IT strategy across the international markets when there is divergent level of economic development. It makes difficult to have a cohesive strategy in case of pricing.

The paper is based on comparison as well as contrasts the value to develop cohesive as well as integrated IT strategy, which exploits the capabilities of emerging IT strategy for every potentially useful emerging IT. It also analysis on the IT strategy contains various theoretical models from which the executives formulate as well as implement cohesive and integrated corporate IT strategies. The paper summarizes the challenges, issues as well as problems with the development of cohesive as well as integrated IT strategy within the organization. Recommendations are given to overcome with the IT strategic issues of the organization so that they can successfully implement their IT strategies within the organization. 

The IT strategies reduce the time it required to assess compatibility for the new technology with current as well as future organizational directions. It also creates an organizational culture based on the value placed upon emerging technologies (Simons 2013). In the current study, it reflects on the decision-making processes by which the IT executives engage in building IT strategy. The research examines the extent to which the executives evaluate emerging information technologies as the potential components of the IT strategy. Integrated IT strategy maximizes the value creation as well as minimizes the cost (Trencher et al. 2014). The integration IT core processes consist of systems development, delivery, management of data, infrastructure provisioning, supporting processes, IT reporting structure, and governance practices etc. It ensures to create value for the customers through effective technology deployment (Assimakopoulos, Oshri and Pandza 2015). The IT strategic integration plan includes balanced application as well as data, infrastructure as well as process related to the projects.

A case study is reflected in this paper to develop a cohesive as well as integrated IT strategy in the Australian National University. It develops an IT strategy that focus on continuing as well as enhancing the tradition of excellence across the university. The IT strategy of Australian National University outlines how the technology is used to enable the strategic goals of the university. The vision of the IT is to create a digital environment that helps to build enduring relationships. Using the integrated IT strategy, the University enables its IT strategic objectives by delivering IT solutions as well as services that advantage investment in technology. It also promotes sustainable as well as efficient IT service delivery. The IT landscape for the higher education sector is changed as an outcome of emerging technology (Services.anu.edu.au 2015). The students are digital natives; therefore, they are engaged with technology as a component of learning process from the young age. When the integrated IT strategy is applied to access the learning resources as well as research collections, then development of the management information system for Australian National University supports the decision-making. It strives to relate the entire success of the organization in terms of academic achievement (Pietrobelli and Puppato 2015). One of the principle requirements of the IT strategy within the university is to make sure that the strategic plan includes consideration of the information resources as well as management.

Theoretical Models for Corporate IT Strategies

Effective use of technology as well as information is vital to Australian National University’s strategic directions as well as institutional goals. IT strategy continues to enrich the educational offerings of Australian National University, which provides the students as well as faculty access to the global network of collaborations (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2013). It also provides new way to engage the stakeholders such as students, community as well as alumnae. Due to the use of emerging technology such as smart phones, laptops, the organization messages short messages to the understudies. The educators use screen recording programming so as to make podcasts of the lectures (Akyol and Garrison 2014). Due to increase in the textbox prices, the educational resources are available to the students online at no cost. Therefore, open content helps the students on the way colleges do. Visual data analysis is the type of technology that is combined with advanced computational methods. It helps the students as the person can put the data into 3-D chart that create it easy to observe where the outliners are (Broman and Robert 2015). Gesture based computing is also popular in the universities as it allows the users to control over the devices do with the body movement.

The integrated IT technology uses the balance scorecard to make the strategies based on both dimension as well as follow-up. The IT balance scorecard should be supported by the organizations such as Australian National University to emerge the real time applications within the university. The user orientation represents the evaluation of the user based on IT (Hirunyawipada, Paswan and Blankson 2015). The operational excellence speaks to the procedures of IT keeping in mind the end goal to create and additionally convey the IT applications. The future introduction speaks to both innovation and additionally HR required by the IT so as to convey administrations inside time. Business commitment catches the estimation of the business that is created from the IT speculations (Ioppolo et al. 2016). The fundamental parts of the IT parity scorecard are the cause impact connections between measures. It consists of two key measures such as outcome measures as well as performance drivers. The outcome measures consist of programmer’s productivity. The performance drivers consist of IT staff education. The performance drivers without the outcome measures are lead to investment without measurement to indicate if the chosen IT strategy for the organization is effective (Sutherland et al. 2016). The better educations to the IT staffs are required for better quality of the developed systems. It is required to increase the satisfaction level of users, which lead to higher business value of the IT.

The enterprise architecture plays an important role to assess with the existing IT assets, architecture standards as well as IT business strategy to create enterprise wide environment. In order to enhance the competitive advantage in the organization, core hardware as well as software systems are integrated across the business process (Sutton and Arnold 2013). The IT strategy details the technologies, data as well as applications in order to deliver goals of the corporate strategy. It ensures the organization about the standardization of the processes such as greater flexibility, faster time to market, improves access to share the data for customers, higher profitability as well as lower risk of system failures (Davenport 2013). As the organizational transition to flexible IT platforms, the organization determines whether they should build their own applications as well as use of packaged applications from the ERP vendor. With the custom built as well as vendor based, the projects have the possibility to fail (Schwalbe 2015). Not all the organizations can accurately foresee the future, as it is hard to estimate which technologies have impact on the organization more. Therefore, the business requires to invest into emerging technologies areas.

Challenges and Issues of Developing Cohesive IT Strategies

A business driven infrastructure involves the decision based on identifying the strategic context of the firm. It is communicated by using the maxim approach that captures the essence of the future direction of the business. It leads to identification of the IT maxim such that the firm should deploy the IT resources as well as gain access to use the data (Borghoff and Pareschi 2013). IT maxim also provides the organization to make decisions on the IT infrastructure services. From the perspective of the business maxims, both businesses as well as IT managers have to identify the needs of the organization to access as well as use data and IT resources required to process transactions as well as meet with technical capabilities (Bilbao-Osorio, Dutta and Lanvin 2013). Development of the business maxim is required to overcome with two of the problems. Firstly, the problem is that some of the firms do not consist of comprehensive strategic statement. Secondly, some of the firms consist of documentation, which is insufficiently focused (Potter et al. 2016). The business maxims interpret the aspects of the strategic context that are easily communicated across the business.

Most of the large enterprises boarded on the project integration initiatives within recent years. The dynamic forces such as market innovation, globalization as well as intense competition drive the enterprises towards superior differentiation in order to focus on the customers, functions as well as products (Cascio and Montealegre 2016). Some of the differentiation restricts the ability of the organization to achieve unity of efforts such as leveraging the global resources as well as delivering of integrated services to the customers. Based on this problems and issues, the enterprises take IT strategic initiatives for their organization in the recent years. The enterprise initiatives disclose that successful enterprise integration requires tackling the system disputes, operational as well as strategic integration. The integration of the system provides scalable IT infrastructure platform (Gerdsri 2016). The operational incorporation enables the design to flow across the project value chains. The strategic integration forms a cohesive across the business strategies towards the venture synergies.

The requirement of the system integration arises due to increasing digitalization of the global ventures. An incorporated system infrastructure facilitates the flow of the information. It includes with managing the compatibility of the data, IT infrastructure as well as applications supported by the range of technologies (Hirunyawipada, Paswan and Blankson 2015). Each of the country has its own ERP system as well as website that integrate the enterprise so that all the emails are consolidated into one standardized system. The customization of the ERP should be standardized as well as operated from a single central source (Broman and Robert 2015). Firstly, the enterprise faces the issues of managing the system incompatibility due to use of same system by the organization. Secondly, it is managing the data as well as application heterogeneity (Assimakopoulos, Oshri and Pandza 2015). The integration of the system through the ERP system requires more efforts such as meeting of the exterior consultant in order to expand data conversion.

Case Study of Australian National University

An effective integration is assisted throughout embracing the client perspective in redesigning the flow of transaction for the better process outcomes. The sharing of information is required in the operational integration such as development of the embedding integrated processes into the IT system (Rotolo et al. 2016). Due to variant in the business data, each of the business units requires extra work in order to synchronize the consistent business data to share the data. With the use of emerging technologies, the universities can easily replace the use of pens as well as notebooks with laptop. Integration of the technologies such as gesture based computing represents a new way to provide information (Akyol and Garrison 2014). However, it challenges the existing structure of the university when it does not have control as well as provide these new emerging technologies.

The strategic integration forms a cohesive across the business strategies towards the venture synergies. It balances the tension among the reinforcing the core strategy as well as redirection of the strategy in order to exploit the growth (Sutherland et al. 2016). The organization faces some issues due to lack of strategic clarity for the enterprise and lack of coherence across various business strategies.

Use of Scorecard approach: Strategic value measurement tool should be used by the organization for existing as well as new initiatives. The IT strategic initiatives should use against their strategic value as well as impact on the business. A most popular measurement tool such as balance scorecard is used for the business based on corporate contribution, future orientation, operational excellence as well as customer orientation. Therefore, measuring the initiatives against the scorecard help to identify the priorities as well as ensue that accurate IT initiatives are adopted for delivery.

Engagement of the staffs: If the key stakeholders are unable to understand the IT strategies, then the execution of the strategy fails. The executive team members, staffs should be engaged in the strategic planning process so that they can implement the proposed strategy in the business.

Meeting and training: Strategy meetings are conducted regularly so that the initiatives are assessed for performance as well as strategic relevance. The strategy should be reviewed to check if it is against the changes in the external as well as competitive environments. Training should be given to the staffs so that they can easily handle the IT resources. If the staffs are not aware of using the proposed IT strategies then there is a chance of failure in implementation of the strategy within the organization. It includes a combination of individuals those are involved in the training programs in order to ensure that they identify their direct impact on the strategic performance.  

Conclusion

It is concluded that the IT strategic planning is a sorted out procedure when an association makes a record shows the way it arrangements to advance from the present circumstance towards future circumstance. In the present study, it thinks about the basic leadership forms by which the IT administrators participate in building IT procedure. The research study looks at the degree to which the officials assess rising data advancements as the potential parts of the IT system. A contextual analysis is reflected in this paper to build up a durable and incorporated IT methodology in the Australian National University. The IT scene for the advanced education division is changed as a result of developing innovation. The understudies are computerized locals; along these lines, they are locked in with innovation as a part of taking in procedure from the youthful age. IT technique keeps on advancing the instructive offerings of Australian National University, which gives the understudies and in addition staff access to the worldwide system of coordinated efforts.

The coordinated IT innovation utilizes the parity scorecard to drive the systems taking into account both estimation and additionally follow up. The IT balance scorecard ought to be bolstered by the associations, for example, Australian National University to raise the constant applications inside the college. The IT technique points of interest the advancements, information and additionally applications keeping in mind the end goal to convey objectives of the corporate system. Some of the emerging technologies are visual data analysis is the type of technology that is combined with advanced computational methods. It helps the students as the person can put the data into 3-D chart. Gesture based computing is also popular in the universities as it allows the users to control over the devices do with the body movement.  

References

Akyol, Z. and Garrison, D.R., 2014. The development of a community of inquiry over time in an online course: Understanding the progression and integration of social, cognitive and teaching presence.

Assimakopoulos, D.G., Oshri, I. and Pandza, K., 2015. 1. Management of emerging technologies for economic and social impact: an introduction.Managing Emerging Technologies for Socio-Economic Impact. Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp.1-22.

Bilbao-Osorio, B., Dutta, S. and Lanvin, B., 2013. The global information technology report 2013.

Borghoff, U.M. and Pareschi, R. eds., 2013. Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Science & Business Media.

Broman, G.I. and Robèrt, K.H., 2015. A framework for strategic sustainable development. Journal of Cleaner Production.

Cascio, W.F. and Montealegre, R., 2016. How Technology Is Changing Work and Organizations. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 3(1).

Davenport, T.H., 2013. Process innovation: reengineering work through information technology. Harvard Business Press.

Gerdsri, N., 2016. Strategic Planning: An Analytical Approach to Building a Technology Development Envelope (TDE) for Roadmapping of Emerging Technologies. In Hierarchical Decision Modeling (pp. 121-145). Springer International Publishing.

Hirunyawipada, T., Paswan, A.K. and Blankson, C., 2015. Toward the development of new product ideas: asymmetric effects of team cohesion on new product ideation. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 30(7), pp.855-866.

Ioppolo, G., Cucurachi, S., Salomone, R., Saija, G. and Shi, L., 2016. Sustainable local development and environmental governance: A strategic planning experience. Sustainability, 8(2), p.180.

Pietrobelli, C. and Puppato, F., 2015. Technology foresight and industrial strategy in developing countries. Maastricht Economic and social Research institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT) & Maastricht Graduate School of Governance (MGSoG).