IT-Business Strategic Alignment Maturity

Author(s):  
Deb Sledgianowski ◽  
Jerry Luftman

Both information technology (IT) and business leaders are continually looking for management practices to help them align their IT and business strategies. Alignment seems to grow in importance as companies strive to link IT and business in light of dynamic business strategies and continuously evolving technologies. Importance aside, what is not clear is how to achieve and sustain harmony among business and IT, how to assess the maturity of alignment, and what the impact of misalignment might be on the firm. This case study describes the use of a management process and assessment tool that can help to promote long-term IT-business strategic alignment. The Strategic Alignment Maturity (SAM) assessment (Luftman, 2000) is used as a framework to demonstrate the evolution of an international specialty chemicals manufacturer’s IT-business alignment practices to enable the achievement of their corporate goals. Major insights from their experience and SAM best practices are highlighted.

Khatulistiwa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-94
Author(s):  
MD. Rahat Khan ◽  
Nanik Shobikah ◽  
Mohammad Abdul Kaium

The impact of globalization is nothing new to the business firms. In the last few decades globalization has changed the business strategies of the companies. The current case study has tried to evaluate the Aetna’s diversity approaches named ‘The Aetna Way’ policy along with its complexity of implementation in people management issues. The report is categorized as follows. The first part of the report has discussed about the background of investigation. The following part has analyzed some closely related literatures related to the context. This past basically narrate the theme of recruitment and retention policy along with talent management process and its significance for the company. The third part of the case has assessed the Aetna’s recruitment and retention policies and then tried to compare the Aetna’s policies with close competitors’ and top performing companies’. This part also evaluates Aetna talent management process and policies and also compare with the competitors. After that in fourth part, the study points some recommendations with justification. The study has recommended the Aetna, to change the traditional recruitment policy and give more concentration on employee retention rate. Technology driven talent management practices should be the time worthy policy of the Aetna. Focusing more on LAMP and MCC frameworks would enhance the effectiveness and efficiency in recruitment, retention, and talent management policies for the Aetna.


Author(s):  
Deb Sledgianowski ◽  
Jerry N. Luftman ◽  
Richard R. Reilly

Achieving IT-business alignment has been a long-standing, critical, information management issue. A theoretical framework of the maturity levels of management practices and strategic IT choices that facilitate alignment was empirically tested and validated. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) validated 6 factors and identified 22 indices to measure strategic alignment maturity. A mixed model repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA) obtained significant results for both the main effect and interaction effect of differences for the 6 maturity factors across the 11 business units. Regression analysis found a positive association between overall strategic alignment maturity and respondents’ self-rated maturity. These exploratory findings show promise for the assessment instrument to be used as a diagnostic tool for organizations to improve their IT-business alignment maturity levels.


2016 ◽  
pp. 59-70
Author(s):  
Ninh Le Khuong ◽  
Nghiem Le Tan ◽  
Tho Huynh Huu

This paper aims to detect the impact of firm managers’ risk attitude on the relationship between the degree of output market uncertainty and firm investment. The findings show that there is a negative relationship between these two aspects for risk-averse managers while there is a positive relationship for risk-loving ones, since they have different utility functions. Based on the findings, this paper proposes recommendations for firm managers to take into account when making investment decisions and long-term business strategies as well.


Author(s):  
Rodrigo Cueva ◽  
Guillem Rufian ◽  
Maria Gabriela Valdes

The use of Customer Relationship Managers to foster customers loyalty has become one of the most common business strategies in the past years.  However, CRM solutions do not fill the abundance of happily ever-after relationships that business needs, and each client’s perception is different in the buying process.  Therefore, the experience must be precise, in order to extend the loyalty period of a customer as much as possible. One of the economic sectors in which CRM’s have improved this experience is retailing, where the personalized attention to the customer is a key factor.  However, brick and mortar experiences are not enough to be aware in how environmental changes could affect the industry trends in the long term.  A base unified theoretical framework must be taken into consideration, in order to develop an adaptable model for constructing or implementing CRMs into companies. Thanks to this approximation, the information is complemented, and the outcome will increment the quality in any Marketing/Sales initiative. The goal of this article is to explore the different factors grouped by three main domains within the impact of service quality, from a consumer’s perspective, in both on-line and off-line retailing sector.  Secondly, we plan to go a step further and extract base guidelines about previous analysis for designing CRM’s solutions focused on the loyalty of the customers for a specific retailing sector and its product: Sports Running Shoes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8316
Author(s):  
Camelia Mirela Baba ◽  
Constantin Duguleană ◽  
Marius Sorin Dincă ◽  
Liliana Duguleană ◽  
Gheorghița Dincă

The Covid-19 induced economic crisis has significantly affected almost all businesses from nearly every sector, causing severe financial problems, lack of cash assets, and decrease of revenues. In this context, the economic entities were forced to look for adjustment and rescue solutions of their activities. One possible solution for the recovery and reorganization of economic entities’ activities is demerger. This paper evaluates the impact of demerger upon the sustainable development of economic entities in terms of economic efficiency and financial performances. To achieve this goal, a statistical analysis of profitability ratios before and after the demerger, as well as a structural analysis of 268 demerger projects for the April 2012–April 2021 period, were performed. The results attest there are no significant differences between the ex-ante and ex-post financial performances. However, demerger seems to have a positive effect upon analyzed companies helping them to overcome economic hardships, rethink their business strategies, and continue their activity in the medium and long-term time horizon.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harish Gupta ◽  
S. Kiran Kumar Reddy ◽  
Mounika Chiluka ◽  
Vamshikrishna Gandla

AbstractIn this study, we demonstrate the impact of the construction of a mega-dam on the nutrient export regime of a large tropical river into the Arabian Sea. Long-term (11 years) fortnight nutrient parameters, upstream and downstream to Sardar Sarovar (SS) Dam, were examined to determine the periodical change in nutrient fluxes from the Narmada River, India. During this 11-year period, the average discharge of the Narmada River upstream to Rajghat (35.3 km3 year−1) was higher than that of downstream at Garudeshwar (33.9 km3 year−1). However, during the same period, the suspended sediment load was reduced by 21 million tons (MT) from 37.9 MT at Rajghat to 16.7 MT at Garudeshwar. Similarly, mean concentrations of dissolved silica (DSi) reduced from 470 (upstream) to 214 µM (downstream), dissolved inorganic phosphate (DIP) from 0.84 to 0.38 µM, and dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) from 43 to 1.5 µM. It means that about 54%, 55%, and 96% flux of DSi, DIP, and DIN retained behind the dam, respectively. The estimated denitrification rate (80,000 kg N km−2 year−1) for the reservoir is significantly higher than N removal by lentic systems, globally. We hypothesize that processes such as biological uptake and denitrification under anoxic conditions could be a key reason for the significant loss of nutrients, particularly of DIN. Finally, we anticipated that a decline in DIN fluxes (by 1.13 × 109 mol year−1) from the Narmada River to the Arabian Sea might reduce the atmospheric CO2 fixation by 7.46 × 109 mol year−1.


Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 855
Author(s):  
Mark W. Brown

The forest industry tends to plan, and model transportation costs based on the potential payload benefits of increased legal gross vehicle weight (GVW) by deploying different configurations, while payload benefits of a configuration can be significantly influenced by the vehicle design tare weight. Through this research the relative benefit of increased legal GVW of different configurations is compared across Australia over a 13-year period from 2006 to 2019, by examining data collected post operation across multiple operations. This approach is intended to offer realistic insight to real operations not influenced by observation and thus reflect long-term operating behaviour. The inclusion of the three most common configuration classes in Australian forestry over a 13-year period has also allowed the exploration of load management between configurations and potential trends over time. When considering the legal GVW and the tare weight impacts across the fleets, the semi-trailer has an 8 t payload disadvantage compared to B-Doubles and 19.6 t disadvantage compared to road trains.


Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 330
Author(s):  
Bryan A. Oakley

Napatree Point, an isolated barrier in southern Rhode Island, provides a case study of barrier spit migration via storm driven overwash and washover fan migration. Documented shoreline changes using historical surveys and vertical aerial photographs show that the barrier had little in the way of net change in position between 1883 and 1939, including the impact of the 1938 hurricane. The barrier retreated rapidly between 1945 and 1975, driven by both tropical and extra-tropical storms. The shoreline position has been largely static since 1975. The removal of the foredune during the 1938 hurricane facilitated landward shoreline migration in subsequent lower intensity storms. Dune recovery following the 1962 Ash Wednesday storm has been allowed due to limited overwash and barrier migration over the last several decades. Shoreline change rates during the period from 1945–1975 were more than double the rate of shoreline change between 1939 and 2014 and triple the rate between 1883 and 2014, exceeding the positional uncertainty of these shoreline pairs. The long-term shoreline change rates used to calculate coastal setbacks in Rhode Island likely underestimate the potential for rapid shoreline retreat over shorter time periods, particularly in a cluster of storm activity. While sea-level rise has increased since 1975, the barrier has not migrated, highlighting the importance of storms in barrier migration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7906
Author(s):  
Nikola Medová ◽  
Lucie Macková ◽  
Jaromir Harmacek

This paper focuses on the dynamic of the recent upheaval in the tourism and hospitality sector due to the COVID-19 epidemic in Greece and Santorini island. It uses the case study of a country one-fourth of whose GDP consists of tourism. We compare the available statistical data showing the change in variables in the previous years with 2020 and look into the new challenges and opportunities posed by the drop in the numbers of visitors and flights. We focus mainly on the economic and social impact on the destination and possible future scenarios for further development in the area. Data show a significant effect of the pandemic on multiple variables, such as the long-term trend of the importance of tourism sector in GDP in Greece, the number of flights and visitors to Greece and Santorini island, and the contribution of tourism and travel to GDP. Based on the available data, we also construct three foresight scenarios that describe the possible futures for Santorini island in terms of the pandemic evolution. These scenarios may help various stakeholders and policymakers to be better prepared for different developments that may appear.


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