by DAN CALLOWAY
Published 20 June 2010
WEAVERVILLE, NC – The following is an analysis of the article: “The Collaborate/Integrate Business Technology Strategy,” by Stephen J. Andriole.
Andriole (2006) discusses the importance for business management today to concentrate on their collaborative business future and how well technology can be integrated into the business before they invest in the technology. He sees collaborative business modeling and technology integration as the two strategic business technology investment priorities for businesses. Andriole defines the collaborative business modeling as the modeling of supply chain management, personalization, optimization, customization, automation, and transaction trust. Likewise, Andriole sees technology integration as the process of supporting the collaborative business modeling, including back-, front-, and virtual-office data and application integration, integrating communication infrastructures, and the development of cross-platform security architectures (p. 85).
The business technology investment priorities model illustrated in Andriole (2006) outlines an approach to collaboration and the integration of technology into the business that any business should take and, by doing so, the decision to invest and integrate technology into the business should be carefully analyzed prior to the investment. According to Andriole, if collaboration and integration are low, the company should not invest in or attempt integrating the technology; if both collaboration and integration within the company are mediocre, the company should carefully assess whether they should invest in and integrate the technology into the business; and, if both collaboration and integration are high, the company should definitely invest in the technology and pursue its integration into the business plan as soon as possible.
One important conclusion reached by Andriole (2006) is that even though business collaboration and technology integration are two crucial investment priorities for the business, the specifics of these two priorities will differ from company to company, and the degree of success for each company will depend greatly on the company’s ability to fully understand the business collaboration models they need to support integrated technology.
Andriole’s (2006) discussion of business technology investment and collaboration priorities enhances the concept of the business strategy as set forth in Ward and Peppard (2002) wherein they stress the importance of assessing, identifying, and defining the business needs and opportunities as a necessary requirement if the IS/IT strategy for the business is to have any significant worth (p. 297). Andriole establishes the relative priorities for IS/IT investments and offers a guideline for the SBU to determine whether investment in technology and its integration into the business should be undertaken. Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) is crucial to the enterprise because, according to Ward et al., it begins with identifying the needs of the business. Objectives, priorities, and authorization for IS projects must be formalized to the extent that everyone understands them, but flexible enough so that priorities can be adjusted if necessary. The business investment collaboration and integration concept of Andriole helps the business to determine whether an investment in technology should be undertaken and if so, how this technology should be integrated into the business to effect the greatest benefit to the business entity. Andriole was chosen because it helped to solidify in my mind, from a decidely different perspective, how a company should go about making the right decisions on if and when to invest in technology, how the integration of that technology should be undertaken into the business, and in what fashion that technology should take, so that the technology will benefit it most.
References:
Andriole, S. (2006). The Collaborate/Integrate Business Technology Strategy. Communications of the ACM, 49(5), 85-90.
Ward, J., & Peppard, J. (2002). Strategic Planning for Information Systems (3rd.). Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.
Dan Calloway
WEAVERVILLE, NC - Reich and Benbasat (2000) argue that the establishment of a strong long-term alignment between IT and organizational objectives received its greatest influence from shared domain knowledge between the two factions. Here, shared domain knowledge is defined by Reich and Benbasat (2000) “as the ability of IT and business executives, at a deep level, to understand and be able to participate in others’ key processes and to respect each other’s unique contribution and challenges” (p. 86). Research conducted years later by Luftman and Kempaiah (2007) appeared to modify the findings of Reich and Benbasat (2000) by indicating that there are three reasons why attaining IT-business alignment has been so elusive: (1) the definition of alignment is frequently focused only on how IT aligns with the business organization; (2) organizations have often looked for a silver bullet wherein mature alignment cannot be attained without effective and efficient execution and a demonstration of value, but this is not sufficient; and (3) there has not been an effective tool with which to measure the maturity of IT-business alignment—one that can provide a descriptive assessment and a prescription on how to improve. Luftman and Kempaiah (2007) went on to identify six components of alignment maturity: (1) communications, (2) value, (3) governance, (4) partnership, (5) scope and architecture, and (6) skills. Furthermore, they identified five levels of alignment maturity within organizations: (1) Level One – initial or ad-hoc processes, (2) Level Two – committed processes, (3) Level Three – established focused processes, (4) Level Four – Improved managed processes, and (5) Level Five – optimized processes. They determined through their research that the majority of organizations are at Level Three on their alignment maturity scale.
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