3. Aligning IT infrastructure and operations with the business goals
In this part, I would analyze the process of aligning IT infrastructure and operations with business goal in details. By looking through the caselets and power points that have been given, my opinion is that IT governance plays the most important role to ensure that IT is aligned with the business goals, by implementing effective IT governance, the organizations can gain the maximum value from IT, so that the business goal on IT would be achieved. I would define the background of IT governance and the process of building effective IT governance.
3.1 Background of IT governance
IT governance is the organizational capacity exercised by the board, executive management and IT
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The whole process of building IT governance for an organization consists of these four steps, and step 4 is the most important step of them because ITIL and COBIT are two methods that guarantee that IT governance could be implemented successfully.
In a critical look, the organizations use COBIT builds the relationship between business goals and IT governance goals. Based on the IT governance goal, ITIL can provide the specific practical principles for them.
In a detailed look, ITIL processes can be linked to the organization’s strategy, internal business environment and IT strategy to contribute to business service excellence. At the strategic level, the organization’s mission feeds into the vision, and together they set the strategic goals and key result areas as detailed in the strategic plan. The IT strategy has to be aligned with the strategic plan through effective performance management and reporting. At the tactical level, the business objectives and core business activities are used to determine the key performance indicators and are detailed in the business plan. At the operational level, IT infrastructure management includes operational management, operational level agreements, event and fault management, and element management. These four operational components ensure activities and processes support the business requirements and provide performance metrics to feed back
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YNG didn’t considerate about technological Direction Planning, they just allow so many database management system run independent at the same time, this behavior causes the cost of maintenance is increased, because they have to divide the technical resource for each of them, and at the same time, because they did not select the proper technical direction, so it is difficult to implement a common control which means they have to waste the limited resource to develop many
The IT department needs to collaborate with the business to better understand how organization changes impact applications and systems. Moreover, IT needs to strengthen the IT-business alignment to stay abreast of future changes. One methodology that may assist here is business architecture, a blueprint of the business that supports aligning strategic objectives and tactical demands. 7. There are limits to customer-centric responsiveness.
Operations Management Process is the central arteries within the organization because it produces the planning process for goods and services, which are its reason for existent. Operations management is linked to all organizations as every organization is producing either a product or a service. However, it cannot be said to be the most important function since there are other functional areas and boundaries within an organization. In today's fast changing world, organizations have to have a tendency towards being efficient, effective and innovative to the changing environment to succeed. Operations Management has to use metrics in order for them to accomplish their task and be successful with minimal interruptions within the organization.
When it came to IT, things really got out of hand. There was no clear path as to how money would be spent on it. IT was responsible for handling almost all of the transactions needed for the hotel. Things such as occupancy, check in/out, product inventory were all part of the IT infrastructure and there were several different configurations of hard/soft-ware, platforms and interfaces.
According to the text book Management of Information Security by Whitman and Mattord- there are seven steps methodology to implement
SMEs must implement control objectives for compliance and improved security, but have limited means to do so. The ISACA study prioritizes the most important IT controls so that SMEs can get on top of their control game.
Iskandar, M., & Salleh, N. A. M. (2010). IT Governance in Airline Industry: A Multiple Case Study. International Journal of Digital Society, 1(4), 308-314.
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.
As threats evolve and change with each new technology introduced organizations will also have to strive to improve the techniques used to protect their critical Information Technology (IT) assets. Gartner's IT Key Metrics Data for 2010 which was based on a survey of companies worldwide found that a company spent 5% of their IT budget on IT Security (Kirk, 2010). Connie Guglielmo, a Forbes staff member noted that IT spending will hit $2 Trillion in 2013 and Worldwide IT spending will rise 4.6 percent this year (Guglielmo, 2013).
Henderson and Venkatraman proposed a model for business – IT alignment; it was intended to support the integration of information technology (IT) into business strategy by advocating alignment between and within four domains (see figure 1). The inter-domain alignment is pursued along two dimensions: strategic fit (between the external and internal domain) and functional integration (between the business domain and the IT domain). The objective of this model was to provide a way to align information technology with business objectives in order to realise value from IT investments. The authors argued that the potential strategic impact of information technology requires both an understanding of the critical components of IT strategy and its role in supporting and shaping business strategy decisions and a process of continuous adaptation and change. Hence, they presented a model that defines the range of strategic choices facing managers.
I-Form organizations, therefore, need to posses the minimum level of F-Form characteristics since for such firms to be successful in such dynamic environment, they must have developed the capability to continually develop it knowledge base and there for be in a position to create and share the required knowledge and the employees have complete freedom and responsibility to take an actions that they decide are best for the organization. This is because design of the I-Form organization enables them to not only learn from the other organizations and also collaboratively interact within such communities and networks so as to compete in the challenging and complex business environments. Therefore, Most organizations
Critical success factors (Rockart, 1979) methodology focuses on identifying key information needs of senior executives and building information systems around those key needs.
One main apprehension that they have against Information System is the high investment cost. In addition to this there is the high maintenance and upgrade costs associated with the deployment of new IT systems. In fact they prefer to outsource the heavy IT department expenditures to other companies having IT as their core activities. In return they expected to receive a full solution pack to meet their requirements and they are ready to pay these IT services as an operating cost. At the same time the risks associated with IS are being shifted to the other
Small, medium enterprises (SMEs) are largest types business in the world, making up an estimated 99.7% of business. According to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) there are nearly five million existing businesses in the UK as of 2013. SMEs are a key contributor towards economic growth in terms of creating more employment, stimulating innovation and promoting social unity. SMEs are responsible for 47% of private sector employment, yet despite such global present there is still no agreed definition of a SME (Storey 1994). Bolton (1971) attempted to define them through a statistical and economic analysis. Classifications which are based on criteria, such as number of employees or annual turnover, however, do not remain consistent across borders. Given their size, smaller companies tend to be more intent on survival rather than expansion and profit maximisation. Smaller sized firms have always felt that the current reporting framework for IFRS is tailored more for the needs of larger companies and that the heavy cost burden it imposes upon them may not be entirely justified. In response to these concerns, the IASB subsequently issued the IFRS for Small and Medium-sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs) in July 2009. This standard offers an alternative framework which can be adopted by entities in place of the already extant full set of IFRSs or local national requirement standards.(Holt 2010) This essay will critically evaluate the impact of the IFRS for SME’s and whether or not it stands as the most suitable framework available for SMEs to use.
The cost of the hardware and software itself is very pricey, along with the upgrades that it costs to keep it running. If a growing small business wants to change from a computer file-based system to a database system, it must be converted. This is a difficult task and time consuming, because you will have to hire a database designer, system designer and application programmers, and since a database management system should not be taken lightly, it is important to hire professionals that will do it right. After creating it, it is important to teach staff members how to use it, which will require time and more money. They will have to learn about programming, application development and database administration. It will also cost a company more money to pay people to handle the database management system. This will include a database administrator and application programmers, which are trained professionals which require a hefty