Integration of content for comprehensive understanding of module concepts

¶ … Integrative Analysis of Course Concepts:

Creating a Framework for Future Learning and Study

Never before has the creation, aggregation, aligning of information to the needs of an enterprise and its effective and secure use meant more to the viability of businesses globally. The most powerful lesson learned in this course is that data, information and knowledge are the most powerful competitive forces any enterprise can rely on today to differentiate itself in maturing markets while seeking out entirely new, high growth opportunities. The combining of analytics, advanced accounting and financial reporting applications, pervasive adoption of enterprise applications for Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and many other tasks are accelerating how quickly enterprises can minimize risks while seizing opportunities. Another invaluable lesson learned in this course is how critical it is to plan for change from a personnel, process and systems perspective. The combining of people, processes and systems is critically important for the technologies that the many systems are based on to succeed. This course has shown that only by concentrating on people as the most critical part of any technology-related and automation-based strategy will any effort succeed. It is the ability to manage change and mitigate the resistance to it while automating key tasks through an enterprise-wide strategy that delivers the most effective and longest-landing benefits. The integrating of people, processes and systems in a triad that is framed with a governance framework that ensures consistency and ethical operation is essential to compete in the 21st century.

Setting The Foundations Of A Learning Framework

Throughout this course the foundational elements and concepts of how to be an Information Technologies (IT) strategist have been learned. As this course progressed my perception of what an IT leader has changed. From seeing the CIO as the leader of IT systems definition, deployment and management to seeing the same role as more of a strategist that relies on IT systems to assist in strategic objectives being attained, my perception of what kind of CIO I want to be has drastically changed. No longer wanting to be the provider of the IT dial tone, I want to be an IT strategist that leads enterprises to attain their strategic goals through the intelligent use of technologies. This shift in perception of what a technology leader is, and has been in the past compared to what needs to be done in the future, was very illuminating.

The delineation of the foundational elements of any IT system, including how to delineate data from information and how to transform tacit and explicit knowedlge into expertise, all have been learned in this course. These concepts, along with the many techniques learned regarding change management, governance, and the need to align IT systems to strategic plans and initiatives, made this class a pivotal one. The many processes that are required for transforming data and information to knowledge can lead any IT department to become myopic; only by concentrating on the overarching strategic objectives and plans, and continually asking who is being served with the efforts of IT departments can any strategy hope to succeed. The cases studied and the cautionary tales of failed IT projects all reverberate with a common thread of losing sight of just who the customer for the programs or projects were and why the systems were developed in the first place. These cautionary tales also showed how powerful successful change management programs are, specifically how IT and business leaders need to concentrate on relying on technology-based systems to support the sociotechnical aspects of an enterprise. The sociotechnical aspects of any enterprise need to be kept in balance as technology is used to bring greater accuracy, clarity, insight, intelligence, knowledge and precision into the decision-making processes of enterprises. Orchestrating all of these factors in unison with each other makes the galvanizing force of a strategic plan and its associated objectives a critical aspect of any IT strategy.

The relevancy of IT then is not so much dictated by the pure technological aspects of the underlying system, yet by their aligning and tailoring to the unique attributes of an enterprises' sociotechnical system. This can be seen across the spectrum of decisions that enterprises make daily, from the very tactical, to the operational and strategic. The tactically-based decisions require an entirely different series and structures of systems to support which need to be agile enough to support rapid, often real-time updates for short-term decision making. Operational decisions, often supported by Distributed Order Management (DOM), ERP, SCM and transaction-centric processing systems vary from tactically-based decisions in that they often taken into account more dependencies across an enterprise. Operational decision-making is at the center of production efficiency and ultimately the ability of an enterprise to meet and exceed the expectations of tis customers. The tactical decisions must however support and be congruent to the strategic decisions of a firm. Strategic decision-making is often supported by decision support systems, executive support systems and expert systems, all of which are designed to provide a more precise analysis of long-term decisions alternatives and potential outcomes.

Each of these systems must be aligned to the people using them, with the tactical systems designed to make the tasks of reducing variability in processes easily accomplished by managers and supervisors. Tactical decisions are made to minimize variability in common processes. Operational decisions are predicated on the coordination and synchronization of cross-functional departments and teams to a common objective. Strategic decisions are focused on the longer-term implications of decision making and how they impact the direction of an enterprise. Systems supporting strategic decision making need to be designed specifically for executives who often want to see how one series of strategies relative to another will impact the financial statements of the firm. Being able to show the impact on Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) for example would be a key criterion in a system designed for strategic decision making.