IT Strategy Focused on Maintaining

¶ … IT strategy focused on maintaining a cutting-Edge technology position is the most effective way to support any kind of overall business strategy.

Imagine studying IT from that of a business perspective. Will a person who is current with the pioneering technology want to stay current with it or not? Is there a possibility that a budget could hinder how much these efforts take place? One does not believe that an IT strategy focused on maintain a cutting-edge position is not the most effective way to support any kind of business strategy.

One needs to look at this from an e-business perspective from that of a business perspective. A cause is that of the Internet as well as a rush to have e-business (Berkman, 2001). "Because of this e-business is forcing alignment, even in classically misaligned older-corporations (Berkman, 2001, pg.2). This means that the company has to make sure that they have an effective e-business in order to compete within their chosen industry. Through this, the CIO has become an effective partner through this matter. However, one needs to discuss it from that of the IT perspective. For those that are CIOs, they quickly realize that by having an e-business elucidation that it become useless because of having to incorporate the necessary privacy as well as security precautions, which all of these do take time to develop. Regardless, CIOs are playing into the matter at a slow rate. In the earlier years, they were considered a voice of reasoning to those on staff (Berkman, 2001).

The gap in alignment is more than that of security as well as privacy. In fact, a disconnect does exist because of an organization wanting speed, which also includes the CIOs understanding in wanting to have strong office functions. This was the case with Furniture.com because they ended up having a number of deliveries that were delayed, which did cause troubles and poor customer service (Berkman, 2001). Their problems occurred from going to the Web too fast without the means of having order-tracking that is accurate, and this included "billing and distributive systems" (Berkman, 2001, p. 2).

Another area of misalignment is in regards to the owndership of what takes place with the e-business. This is because of how the CIOs have their responsibility, and the IT individuals have thiers. A lack of collaboration takes place during this timeframe. In order to make this a success, this takes a lot of different people to make it happen. For example, Lucent Technologies knows that it "involves a redesign of the company's business pocess, and senior leadership of the business should be participating" (Berkman, 2001, p.2). Regardless, the CIO is to take on an important role through the entire aspect of it (Berkman, 2001).

Someone needs to consider the misalignment that goes beyond that of e-business itself (Berkman, 2001). "Many companies still don't see IT as a strategic tool" (Berkman, 2001, p.2). This is a deep chasm that reaches far and wide that one could ever imagin. The individuals do not understand the value because business is lost everytime IT is not working for a company. Eventuallly, this does affect that of human resources and many other departments within the organization (Berkman, 2001).

Staffing issues, reporting structure and e-business are currently the biggest pieces of the alignment puzzle. Fitting them all into place is different than it was a year ago and it's different than it will be a year from now - different, but no less of a challenge (Berkman,

2001, p.3).

Many business executives fail to know enough about technology. The way in which they do is by means of magazines or salespeople. Each of them use technology as a means in which to drive the company, but no little about it. For example, structurally they appear okay, but when it is on paper, this appears much worse than one could imagine would looking at all the numbers to keep it going regularly. All of these one has to consider when it comes to looking at IT and alignment within a firm (Jahnke, 2004).

The next area is that of IT organizations are so driven by technology, but they do not grasp the business needs effectively (Jahnke, 2004). "They cannot translate business needs into technology solutions. Many IT executives cannot present a business case for or against a particular technology" (Jahnke, 2004, p.2). How the technology performs is baed on the approval or disapporval from those in management. The factors are presented at the technology evaluation stage, but they fail to get at the alignment aspect of it (Jahnke, 2004).

This does include that of business and IT people who cannot agree on how to align the company. Their perceptions and expectations and perceptions are vastly different. No one can get along to figure out how to get the organization running smoothly because of how each of them have unique perspectives and personalities about the issue at hand (Jahnke, 2004).

Many other areas are worth considering with this ordeal. A lack of a clear business plan or strategy is not in place, which makes it difficult to align technology with organizational tactics. This can end up causing a "conflict between business strategy and operating objectives" (Deloitte Consulting, 2004, p.5). All the different entitites will conflict, especially if there is a lack of resources within the firm (Deloitte Consulting, 2004).

Deloitte Consulting (2004) brings up others that are important. What is interesting is that "world religion changes" can impact a business (Deloitte Consulting, 2004, p.5). These do include various events, such as wars. With the economy and regulations, they do impact that of business itself. However, one cannot leave out that of market as well as social changes that occur on a regular basis. One cannot forget the societal factors, and that all of these are important when trying to align any aspect of a business with the IT professionals. Regardless, they are internal and external that impacts a company for either the positive or negative (Deloitte Consulting, 2004).

When aligning IT with an organization, failure is considered quite common. This puts those in the IT department as a means in which to deal with the marketplace as a battle, which is not their area of expertise (Holmes, 2007). "That's why the aligned organization's top executives create a supportive environment in which the CIO and other executives quickly recognize what isn't working, learn from it and recover" (Holmes, 2007, p.2). This is what makes up a company's culture by finding out a way to beat against the odds, although this is not always the case (Holmes, 2007).