IT Management and E Services

¶ … Business Management Management The role of IT in the management of organizations is an important one. IT departments help to organize, structure, stabilize and protect information flows for the organization's processes -- both internally and externally. A strong IT department can be all the difference between a successful organization and an organization hampered by slow communications, continuously crashing servers, and outdated and outmoded technology systems that fail to help the firm establish a meaningful connection with the consumer base.

Therefore, my role is to oversee the integration of software, hardware and business management capabilities throughout the organization. If they are all properly integrated, the firm should run more smoothly and effectively because each acts as part of the backbone of the company -- and a company without a backbone cannot stand up straight and move forward.

Challenges that I perceive as head of the IT management effort at Magnum are updating systems, educating users on new software, and developing a strategic workforce that can identify problems and gaps in service before they occur. This will help to ensure that the IT department is out in front of every issue that comes the way of the company.

Whether these are external threats such as cyber attacks, or internal threats such as outdated equipment, poor response time, or inadequate communications, every aspect of the company must be analyzed from an IT point-of-view to ensure that the IT department is doing everything it can to give the firm the support it needs to succeed. As Belk (2014) observes, "you are what you can access," and if firm's cannot access the information they need, then they essentially do not have it.

IT has to make sure that all pathways are open, all lines secure, and all information available as needed. E-Business The views of operations, marketing, finance and legal are all important when working on e-business capabilities. Operations will have input on what the e-services strategy should be -- whether it is interested primarily in gathering big data sets, maintaining relational databases or engaging in cost leadership or product differentiation: the aim of operations will set the stage for the IT initiative.

Likewise, marketing will have input on how e-business should function: it will want to gather and collect data and also devise online marketing campaigns; IT will need to communicate with marketing in order to ensure that accounts are safe and organized. Finance will play a part in determining a budget for the project and IT will have to operate within its parameters. Legal will also have some say in jurisdictional transactions, the maintaining of IP (intellectual property), and the limits of sharing information (Labrecque et al., 2013).

Key technical challenges likely to be encountered in re-engineering the e-business function at Magnum will be developing systems that can be utilized both by consumers and the organization -- the former for finding items/services they want/need with ease and speed; the latter for gathering data about consumers, their web-activity, status,.