Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware Essay

The purpose of this article is to illuminate the need for any organization to have its IT strategy and business strategy properly aligned. While many organizations view IT and business alignment as an event – it is actually an on-going process, or continuous journey. Therefore, the main problem is that many organizations of today still hold these two principles (business mission & IT strategy) as two separate entities. However, in the Information Age – collaboration is key to capturing and retaining market penetration. To not have alignment with the IT and business strategy together is not a matter of want it is a matter of survival. This report will expand upon the need for business and IT strategic alignment as well as examine what happens in lack of a comprehensive plan. This will be done by examining the Vermont Teddy Bear company prior to and after the arrival of Bob Stetzel, the Vice President of Information Technology. This document will view it findings and make recommendations on the immediate and future operations of the company.

In the “Mini Case Study: IT Planning at ModMeters”, it is clear that the communication skills between the business managers and the IT managers were in need of improvement. IT planning is a method used to form clear objectives for IT organizations that connect directly back to the enterprise’s strategic business goals (“IT planning”, 2014). IT strategic planning assists in directing the business strategy, based on IT capabilities and opportunities and determines IT’s role in delivering the business strategy. There is a clear lack of communication and individual opinions on taking ModMeters global. Although CEO John Johnson and other high leveled corporate employees believed the idea was promising and seemed to look good on paper, Brian Smith, CIO of ModMeters had different thoughts on the expansion. Brian Smith knew that although the new initiatives were theoretically doable; however with such tight resources including people, time, and money, he knew that finding the means to support two new strategic initiatives was nearly impossible (McKeen, J.D., & Smith, H.A., 2012, p. 69). There seemed to be a major lack of communication when planning the new initiatives and the miscalculation of funds to do it successfully.

As a result, the IS people weren’t a particularly happy lot...no one really had a great deal of respect for them.” (Brown & Vessey, 2001) This shows that business users were disconnected with their IT development counterparts and most often blamed IT for not doing enough to fix problems with the applications. They failed to realize that the problems they were seeing with their systems was due to the business users requesting a lot of adhoc changes to be made to the system without engaging proper change management

Copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America This chapter was originally published as chapter 1 of The Adventures of an IT Leader, copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the

The “IT Doesn’t Matter” article by Nicholas Carr, states an unrealistic view of the importance of IT in today corporate world. Carr tries to explain that due to the vast amount of advances in the technology field, IT has been rendered mundane. He states that IT has become as common place as a telephone or a typewriter before the beginning of the PC age. The article attempts to explains that due to the ability of most people to obtain computer systems that have capabilities that normal users will never need or use makes high end computers unable to provide the advantage that bigger companies once held over smaller ones.

The role played by the IT in the company to the rest of the organization is reactive to business conditions rather than a proactive approach. IT has been busy establishing several IT processes, policies, and projects in order to catch up with current demand from customers, and has been relying on the “diving catch” approach of finishing things at the very last minute.

As most business they knew that proper investment in the Information systems and Information Technology is the best way to go but they dropped the ball when it came to proper investing, they either didn’t realize or ignored the problems

After reading the case, one continues to come up with new problems and issues along the way that are related to information technologies. The three main problems we encountered in this case are lack of IT knowledge, inappropriate planning, and ineffective and inefficient Resource Management. Each of these issues requires specific attention to fix the next problem and so forth. The solution to attack each individual problem or issue will be explained as follows.

Information Technology (IT) is a foundation for conducting business today. It plays a critical role in increasing productivity of firms and entire nation. It is proven that firms who invested in IT have experienced continued growth in productivity and efficiency. Many companies' survival and even existence without use of IT is unimaginable. IT has become the largest component of capital investment for companies in the United States and many other countries.

There are communication concerns between business and IT sectors. The relationship confidential the whole association does not work adequately, Hefty does not arise up with a composite way that initiatives both IT and commercial organization, hereafter ignoring to proposal a solid IT methodology.

In this paper, the author will introduce a failure case of K-Mart 's IT modernization system project. In 2001, K-mart took $1.4 billion dollars into this project with the purpose of competing with its rival Walmart. The dream is beautiful, but the real work is cruel. After 18 months, the project was failed because of lacking of cash. What happened in the detailed for this project? $1.4 billion dollar is huge numbers, why it was still not enough to pay and distribute for this project? How did its project manager do in this project? What are the project problems? How can we learn from the failure of this case? The paper includes the case background introduction, the project development process, the problems in the project, analysis and

The business division also felt that IT lacked credibility, and could not be trusted to complete business projects successfully. These feelings were further reinforced by the fact that it took IT a long time to install new, business related technology. To make matters worse, these new applications and systems often did not work as expected right away and the IT staff seemed uninterested in fixing them quickly. Hefty Hardware also had a high CIO turnover due to the many failed projects.

In 2003 when Nicholas Carr wrote the article “IT Doesn’t Matter” companies were just beginning to utilize information technology as a competitive advantage. Mr. Carr contends that technology is not a permanent advantage because in time the competition will acquire the same resources and Information Technology (IT) just becomes another commodity. For the majority of companies throughout the world IT resources have become easily accessible and affordable. If Mr. Carr’s opinion is correct then the equality of IT access has just become a cost of doing

Information Technology (IT): The hardware and software technologies a firm needs to achieve its business objectives (Kenneth C Laudon and Jane P Laudon., 2010).

This paper will discuss the processes and pitfalls faced by Information Technology managers in today’s world of business. Today’s IT managers need not only be savvy about existing equipment and upcoming technology; but must also understand the budget issues they face and how to properly address them. The IT manager is asked to look into a crystal ball and predict what products will be beneficial and which requirements can be cut from the budget. They must be able to differentiate between the new shiny fad and products that will be a true asset to the company’s visions and goals. An IT budget can no longer be a static number on the company’s finance sheet; it must be a clear vision of the department’s future spending while falling in line with the goals and expectations of the company.