Business strategy-IT alignment in a multi-actor setting

Author(s):  
Vincent Pijpers ◽  
Jaap Gordijn ◽  
Hans Akkermans
Author(s):  
J. Gilbert Silvius

The relationship between IT and value is complex and often disputed. Researchers and practitioners have created numerous models and valuation methods to capture this value. Although payoffs from IT investment are a function of strategic alignment, most of these models do not address the alignment of business and IT as a factor that influences or creates value. This paper explores the role of business and IT alignment in the valuation methods of IT assets and investments. It focuses on the impacts resulting from the use of IT assets, considering the function and nature of the impacts. It also explores the alignment of IT valuation and business strategy. The paper is concluded with the construction of a comprehensive selection model that provides guidance for aligning the IT valuation method with the specific characteristics, impacts and organizational context of an IT asset or investment.


Author(s):  
J. Gilbert Silvius

The relationship between IT and value is complex and often disputed. Researchers and practitioners have created numerous models and valuation methods to capture this value. Although payoffs from IT investment are a function of strategic alignment, most of these models do not address the alignment of business and IT as a factor that influences or creates value. This paper explores the role of business and IT alignment in the valuation methods of IT assets and investments. It focuses on the impacts resulting from the use of IT assets, considering the function and nature of the impacts. It also explores the alignment of IT valuation and business strategy. The paper is concluded with the construction of a comprehensive selection model that provides guidance for aligning the IT valuation method with the specific characteristics, impacts and organizational context of an IT asset or investment.


Author(s):  
Eng K. Chew ◽  
Petter Gottschalk

Chapter IV defines the macromodel for achieving business/IT alignment. This chapter defines the detailed methodology for each step of the IT strategy process. First, the business strategy process must be methodical and able to clearly show the linkage between corporate strategic intents and the respective specific business functional plans for realizing the intents. For example, for a specific productivity goal defined for the corporation, the respective initiatives planned for sales and marketing, and those for supply chain management must be clearly linked and explicitly correlated in a “cause-and-effect” manner. A good method invented by Norton and Kaplan called strategy map is an effective tool for this purpose. This chapter reviews the basic principles of IT strategy. It briefly discusses various models used to analyze or describe disparate parts of strategic alignment. These strategic alignment models are contrasted with our end-to-end alignment model for defining and executing business-aligned IT strategy. It shows that our model has integrated all the individual disparate alignment elements proposed by these models. Further, it shows our model has addressed some key requirements which have either not been considered or only partially considered by some of these models. The main strengths of our model compared to previous work are twofold: (a) it addresses all alignment elements in an integrated fashion to make them meaningful and useful for practitioners; and (b) it addresses the full life cycle of strategic alignment from direction setting to strategic outcome monitoring and ongoing feedback loop for self-adjusted alignment (aided by architecture principles and IT governance).


Author(s):  
Kevin Johnston

The alignment of business strategy with IT strategy has been a concern of chief information officers (CIOs) (Berkman, 2000; Croteau & Bergeron, 2001; Crowley, 2001), chief executive officers (CEOs) (Armstrong, Chamberlain, Moore & Hart, 2002; Mesoy, 1999), academic researchers (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1999; Reich & Benbasat, 2000; Tallon & Kraemer, 2000), and research companies (Broadbent, 2000; Croteau & Bergeron, 2001; Meta Group, 2001) since the age of vacuum tubes. In surveys (Mesoy, 1999) of CIO concerns, alignment has consistently been rated as a major issue. A Cutter study reported that business-IT alignment was “the number one problem facing IT” (Crowley, 2001).


Author(s):  
Petros Theodorou

The structure of production during the last decade has been changed radically. The importance of design, flexibility, quality, and dependability increased. The main motive behind that restructuring seems to be the qualitative and quantitative diversification of demand (regulatory, technology, and other issues can be mentioned as well). The diversification of demand forced production to be more flexible in order to accommodate the environment’s variations. Information systems (IS) proved to be a perfect ‘partner’ for the enterprise who wants to move along at this pace: to increase competitive advantage and retain its competitive position in the market. The capabilities of information technology (IT) for increasing competitive advantage forced management to consider IT in the strategic planning process and to consider IT not as a mere tool of bolts and nuts, but as a strategic partner. The key for the successful IT-IS adoption is the strategic IT alignment model. According to this, IT should be aligned with organizations’ structure and employees’ culture in order to avoid resistance and increase core competence at the strategic level. But the strategic options offered by advanced IT investments are not appraised by using the usual hard financial criteria. Instead, Black and Scholes developed a financial formula to valuate derivative financial products and open the road to valuate options offered by real investments. Thus, the application of Black and Scholes’ formula offers an opportunity to valuate financially strategic IT investment.


Author(s):  
Tiffany Pham ◽  
David K. Pham ◽  
Andrew T. Pham ◽  
Mitchell Fox ◽  
Larry Rothstein ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Constantinos Giannoulis ◽  
Eric-Oluf Svee ◽  
Jelena Zdravkovic

A core concern within Business-IT alignment is coordinating strategic initiatives and plans with Information Systems (IS). Substantial work has been done on linking strategy to requirements for IS development, but it has usually been focused on the core value exchanges offered by the business, and thus overlooking other aspects that influence the implementation of strategy. One of these, consumer preferences, has been proven to influence the successful provisioning of the business's customer value proposition, and this study aims to establish a conceptual link between both strategy and consumer preferences to system requirements. The core contention is that reflecting consumer preferences through business strategy in system requirements allows for the development of aligned systems, and therefore systems that better support a consumer orientation. The contribution of this paper is an approach to establish such alignment, with this being accomplished through the proposal of a consumer preference meta-model mapped to a business strategy meta-model further linked to a system requirements technique. The validity of this proposal is demonstrated through a case study carried out within an institution of higher education in Sweden.


2018 ◽  
pp. 898-916
Author(s):  
Vincent Kobina Ahene Parry ◽  
Mary L Lind

Information technology (IT) governance is an important component in developing an overall business and IT strategy. Factors to consider in the IT governance and strategy relationship are project portfolio control, risk management. Using a quantitative survey of 201 IT executives a significant relationship was shown between effective IT governance and project portfolio control and risk management. However, the results of the study did not support a significant relationship between effective IT governance and business/IT alignment. Ultimately, this study helped to shed light on the relationship between effective IT governance and project portfolio control as well as provided support to the existing literature on the relationship between effective IT governance and risk.


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