Strategic Management of

Information Technology

 

Sample Three-Day Seminar

 

Dr. Richard Scudder

 

 

 

The impact of the Internet on today’s businesses has been phenomenal.  New ways of doing business are driving most organizations to reexamine their strategies, marketing and management techniques. Both new start-ups and long established organizations need to examine the way they relate to their customers, and the way they provide goods and services.

 

The World Wide Web is a challenge for everyone.  Innovative newcomers introduce radical changes in the conventional value chain, in the way they interact with customers, and the delivery of their products.  Traditional brick and mortar businesses struggle with ways to evaluate and change their value chain and find new ways to reach their customers.  Both continue to search for the best approach to developing a successful e-business strategy.  This course looks at key methods for understanding changing business models, changing customers and new sources of value.

 

Course Strategy

 

This three day course is designed as a workshop.  It features interactive discussions of the topic areas, targeted case studies, small group interaction, and readings on e-Business.  The course is designed to give the participants a strategic understanding of both the technologies underlying e-Business, process planning and business models that can be used to compete in today’s markets.

 

Who Should Attend

The course is intended for both entrepreneurs and executives who want to start a new business venture or who are simply looking at increasing the profitability of the business they currently manage. It should also benefit professionals wishing to capture the essence of how to create e-business models and validate all the steps toward starting sound and viable activities. Attendees might include:

*  Senior level organizational strategists

*  Customer service directors

*  Information technology directors

*  Suppliers to the communications industry

*  Web site designers who need to understand e-Business models

*  Consultants to businesses

 

Course Outline

 

The Emerging Value Logic of IT

 

Value logic refers to the strategic benefits firms anticipate from their investments in information technology. The strategic role of IT has broadened out to the transformation of not just the value chain but of the entire value constellation binding a firm with its business partners, including customers, suppliers, and other external stakeholders. 

 

*  The traditional value logic of IT – Competitive advantage

*  The emerging value logic of IT – Sustaining competitive agility

*  Business forces driving the need for IT

*  How IT sustains competitive agility

*  Examples of firms that have used IT to successfully transform their value constellations.

 

IT and Strategy:  How technology links to business needs.

 

The first session of the seminar provides an overview of the strategic impact of e-business.  It looks at how executives and strategic planners need to examine the way they are using IT to meet the changing business environment

 

·        Changing technologies

o       Setting the Context

o       Macro Trends

o       Surprise-free projections

o       Opportunities and Threats

o       Conclusions

 

 

o        

·        Digital Convergence

o       The revolution of digital convergence

o       Significant technologies

o       Key segments

o       Digital convergence and IT

·        Coping with Transformation

o       Shifting economies

o       Coping with information

o       Disintermediation and deconstruction

o       Richness vs reach

o       Finding value

·        What executives should know about strategic IT applications delivery

o       Strategic drivers

o       Responsive to the dynamic nature of the business

o       Available through compressed cycle times for applications development

o       Involve a minimal maintenance burden

o       Flexible and scalable

·        Strategies for delivering strategic IT applications

o       “Bite” sized applications philosophy – no more than “six” month windows for development

o       Heavy participation by business executives in applications conceptualization

o       IT executives as strategic consultants

o       Focus on the value logic, value propositions, and value constellations of the business.

 

Delivering E-Business – Getting the Process Right

The delivery of e-Business applications requires experience and expertise with process and project management.  Project management continues to be a challenge with high rates of failure.  This session will examine some of the effective strategies for project management success.  Topics for discussion include:

·        Capabilities for Effective IT Management

o       Enterprise capabilities

o       IT as a business unit

o       IT infrastructure and enterprise wide relationships

·        Developing Process

o       Facilitating change

o       Defining project success

o       Responsibilities of a project manager

o       Stakeholders and sponsors

o       What coordination and control tactics

o       Partner with business clients

Physical IT Infrastructures

       This session will examine the physical components of IT infrastructures and discuss some of the different choices facing IS executives.  What are the criteria that they must apply in evaluating the choices and developing the physical IT infrastructures?  Topics that will be discussed include

*  The criteria for assessing physical IT infrastructures

*  Total cost of ownership

*  Scalability

*  Flexibility

*  Computing infrastructures

*  Thin clients vs. fat clients

*  Client server architectures

*  Symmetric multiprocessing

*  Database infrastructures

*  Relational databases

*  Object databases

*  Universal databases

*  Telecommunications infrastructure

*  LANs and WANs

*  Virtual private networks

 

Knowledge Infrastructures

 

          The acquisition, storage, and deployment of knowledge is the cornerstone of effective business strategy and performance today.  Information technologies provide the foundation for enhancing organizational intelligence through appropriately designed and maintained knowledge infrastructures.  This session will examine some of the key issues that executives must think about in designing IT-enabled knowledge infrastructures for their business firms.  Topics include:

·        The different types of knowledge in organization: tacit vs. explicit, know-how, know-what, and know-why

·        Knowledge conversion strategies: combination, externalization, socialization, and internalization (derived from Nonaka). 

·        Key technologies for building knowledge infrastructures, including data warehousing, decision support systems, online analytic processing (OLAP), push-based delivery systems, Intranets, and collaborative work systems (such as Lotus Notes).

·        How should business and functional executives be involved in the development of knowledge infrastructures?

 

Process Planning

 

·        Defining goals and objectives

·        Scope planning

·        Scope definition

·        Defining tasks and the concept of manageable work unit.

·        Sequencing of project activities

·        Resource planning

·        Estimating activity work, duration and costs

·        Factors affecting work, duration and cost estimates

·        Schedule development and cost budgeting

·        Management of risk

Creating an Effective Process Management Environment

*  Organizational issues

*  Ten steps to creating a project environment

*  Executive responsibilities

Creating a Plan

This final session will allow participants to create an overall strategy and plan for their organization and then share it with their team members for critique  and improvement.