Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware

Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware Introduction The vice president Cheryl O’Shea of Hefty’s new store launch named savvy expressed her view about IT who is failing to deliver projects on time and need to be outsourced to complete the project on time. This failure is mainly due to the IT people lacking the minimum knowledge on Hefty’s business process. She insisted to frame a plan for an effective outcome. Upon the initial analysis of Hefty’s business it showed many fields to be lacking like infrastructure, productivity and bandwidth to be included in the plan. Apart from the view on IT department the COO, Glen Vogel mentioned Jenny, Account Manger of IT department who always attends the business meetings and delivers effectively the business strategies to IT department. He is well versed the business terminology and the strategies and conveys it into a language that IT understands and design a plan accordingly to implement the strategy effectively. It is generally believed by COO that IT doesn’t know certain operations performed within the business (Smith & McKeen, 2013).

Keywords: Business and IT Alignment, Bridging Gap between IT and Business Key Concerns Business Issues:
Due to the delay of IT people to deliver services or products in time is leading business, who feels delivering a project on time in a quick way to the customers, to be an ineffective deliverer of the products on time. For a successful project delivery or organizations business growth the business must be always updates nd ready to change according to the requirement in project delivery (Smith & McKeen, 2013).

IT issues:
The primary goal of IT is to provide more effective products in an economic way generating revenue to the organization as well setting a business standard. Presently IT has an upper hand in delivering the strategies of business without prior knowledge on the business, which is not considered as primary which includes designing and planning making IT less contributing to the business improvement. Business and IT Alignment The main idea of Business and IT alignment is to associate the requirements and objectives of the departments for obtaining a better result. These factors mostly oppose but according to the technical and economic experts accept that the association among them in the long run is important to the success of an organization (Rouse, 2006). According to Rouse (2006), alignment of Business and IT comprises of interaction among the executives who make decisions of business and the IT managers who direct the technical functions in an organization.

Technical department administrators can plan and put forward recommendations that might be custom-made to guarantee the Return of Investment (ROI). Business executives can go to the seminars and meetings of IT department to enhance their understanding of the specialized abilities and confinements of the organization (Rouse, 2006). “Business Alignment, the degree to which IT applications, infrastructure and organization enable and support the business strategy and processes, as well as the process to realize this.”(Sylvius et al, 2009). Bridging the Communication Gap with Effective Collaboration: There are different reasons for the process of alignment in organizations like one being the way of interactions between two departments, IT being more technical and business being more on budgeting leading to a gap and reaching each other as expected.The initial step in successful alignment is the effective collaboration. According to Mangold (2014), collaborative environment guarantees that needs of business are understood by the IT and business.

Enabling alignment through an effective collaboration needs adherence with three main principles which are trust, communication and context. Trust: The need for a impartial coordinator to coordinate both the departments and bring honesty and clarity by exposing every issue to each and everyone, but not loosing the confidentiality of the sources they have in the organization (Mangold, 2014). Communication: Ensuring that the terminology is understandable to each and everyone while addressing the issues arised. This often includes distributed and keeping up a glossary of terms and guaranteeing that all parties comprehend and accept the terms (Mangold, 2014). Context: Proper understanding of the project, including each and every segment of the project by the two departments is highly needed to discharge their own responsibilities as well the team and department (Mangold, 2014) How ITIL and TOGAF Provide Service:

Figure 1 shows how components of TOGAF and ITIL interact to provide service (Mangold, 2014).

The above figure depicts the framework of architecture developed by an architect from the strategies and gaols as pointed by the executive committee of the organization.This updated software is now processed for IT operations by means of ITIL to process, modify and release to the customer meeting their requirement (Mangold, 2014). Integrated Service Support: with the support of TOGAF and ITIL, The architects can easily route the procedures and fields from both the departments producing an advantageous path for the alignment. TOGAF will help in organizations strategy planning while, ITIL in effective operations and mostly are suitable as well adaptable to present business environments.

As the main goal of architects is considering the entire organization’s architecture while the goal of ITIL is to deliver of effective IT services taking the help of TOGAF to frame procedures for integration. This integration concept helps to establish collaboration defining each others roles and their modes interactions with inter and intra departments during the project delivery from the very beginning of strategy planning to till the service delivery (Mangold, 2014). Figure 2 illustrates the information flow and high level activities in TOGAF/ITIL integrated environment (Mangold, 2014).

On depicting the enterprise architecture and service delivery as two different layers , when combined will depict the collaboration between the architecture and business departments. This model also contains management processes, requirements and applications for further use and effeciency (Mangold, 2014). Analysis The top most issues prevailing at Hefty is the large gap which is in between IT and business. Alignment of IT and business is highly needed for organizations like Hefty having median margins for its survival in the business environment and also in the minds of customers for a longer duration.

In order to bridge the gap between IT and Business for successful launch of the Savvy store without any postponement can be aided by sending knowledgeabl representatives from both the departments on trip to the store to make some survey and understand the situations at the store.Though the IT department is efficient in reducing the cost tactically, but unable to process it accordingly to the strategic plan. Methodologies can be implemented to see that IT delivers the projects on time.Understanding each other strategies and coordinating will help in improving the productivity and maintain standards in the market (Smith & McKeen, 2013). Conclusion

Though IT designs plan irrespective of specified budget leading to add-on investment, but profit percentage is more when compared with the investment. It is advised that IT look for an economic and reliable ways to implement its strategies. Implementation of new technologies must be cross checked for the implications it can produce from the market as well from customers. Allowing IT to attend the business meetings makes IT understand business strategies and coordinate accordingly to reach the goals of organizations. Reviewing the outcomes and feedback from previous projects and developing new strategies and implementing them in an effective way will put the organization on the track of business progress.

References

Mangold, K. (2014). An Enterprise Approach To Business/IT Alignment. Architecture and Governance Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.architectureandgovernance.com/content/enterprise-approach-businessit-alignment Rouse, M. (2006, May). Business-IT alignment. Techtarget.com. Retrieved from http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/business-IT-alignment Smith, H. A., & McKeen. (2013). Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware. In Kursh, S., Lant,T., Majeske, K., Oliver, J., & Plant, R.(Eds.), retrieved from IST 7100 IT policy and strategy Wilmington University (pp. 240-243). United States: 1 Pearson Learning Solutions. Silvius, A.J. Gilbert, Waal, Benny de, Smit, Jakobus: Business and IT Alignment; Answers and remaining questions, PACIS 2009 Proceedings, 2009.