Week 4 - Strategic Alliance Model

Source / Reference:
1)  "Strategic Alignment: Leverage Information Technology for transforming organization" by J C Henderson and N Venkartraman 1993
http://search.proquest.com/docview/26252741/134A6C8B53F19A4F606/1?accountid=16210
2)  "Strategic Alignment: Analysis Of Perspectives" by P Coleman and R Papp 2006
http://sais.aisnet.org/2006/Coleman-SAIS2006-paper.pdf


Subject: 
Which alignment strategy in SAM model is the best? and why?


Response:
With regard to reference one, I agree with the authors that there is no one universal superior strategy. A strategy would not be strategic anymore if everyone adopt it. In my opinion, a business should base on the external environment and its internal structure and culture to make the best decision for strategic alignment, as different industry is facing various factors and each company a unique organization. The one who can capture the trend of market and business transformation and make its business and IT strategy align together to fit or even alter the market structure would finally success in the market.

Based on lecture four, we have been taught on four alignment strategy which are strategy execution, technology transformation, service level and competitive potential. While searching through the net, other kinds of perspective are found in Coleman and Papp's paper. Three of them are the same as proposed by Henderson and Venkartraman are the other five approaches are stated as follows:

Technology Potential

The pivot is information technology strategy and it is driven by business strategy. The information technology infrastructure is the impacted area in results. Information technology shows its value and contributes to the business’ final product or service. The relationship between the business and the customers is critical.



Organization IT Infrastructure
The next perspective is the organization information technology infrastructure perspective. The main driver is organization infrastructure, then passes through information technology infrastructure and finally impact the information technology strategy. Process improvements are made from information technology and the application of value to the business processes.

IT Infrastructure Strategy
It focuses on the improvement of information technology strategy based on the execution of rising and existing information technology infrastructures. Information technology infrastructure is the anchor and drives the information technology strategy to affect the business strategy.


IT Organization Infrastructure
IT infrastructure is the anchor again and being with organizational infrastructure as the pivot, affecting the business strategy. It is similar to IT infrastructure strategy but IT is the driving force and architect to carry out the visions and processes.


Organization Infrastructure Strategy
Business infrastructure is the anchor and business strategy as the pivot, finally IT strategy is the affected domain. It makes use of the abilities to develop and improve new products and services, affect strategy, and extend new relationships.

From the above perspectives, we can see that there are many other kinds of methods to align the business and IT, but in Coleman and Papp's paper, there is even fusion of strategies, which means the combination of two of the individual perspective stated above. They are shown as follows:

Organization strategy fusion
It is the combination of IT organization infrastructure and IT infrastructure strategy, which both has an impact on business strategy. It focuses on the two weak points (IT strategy and organization infrastructure), anchored by IT infrastructure. The basis of this fusion is technology driven and has a dominant role in the business.

Organization infrastructure fusion
It combines the service level and competitive potential. The anchor is IT strategy and impacts on organization infrastructure. IT infrastructure and business strategy are the weak points. This fusion is referring to the performance of IT and the organization’s decision of its value.

Information technology strategy fusion
This fusion is to combine organizational IT infrastructure and organizational infrastructure strategy. The weak points are business strategy and IT infrastructure and they are anchored by the organization infrastructure. The perspective explains to top management how IT must be developed to make effective strategic changes.

Information technology infrastructure fusion
The strategy execution combines with technology potential perspectives results in this fusion. The anchor is business strategy and the pivots are organization infrastructure and IT strategy. IT infrastructure is impacted. New and emerging IT architecture are focused to lead to the success in the business future.

As a conclusion, there are many ways to align the business and IT strategy and their infrastructure. Sometimes they may be confusing. But according to Coleman and Papp, they have done some research on those perspective that adopted by industry. As a business, we may take them as a reference to help us on deciding which perspective is suitable for our business.

Week 3 (Lecture 3) - The Strategic Framework and BPR for e-Business

Source / Reference:
1)Dusko Ursic, Sandra Anteric, and Matjaz Mulej. Business Process Re-engineering in Practice—An Example of A Medium-Sized Slovenian Company in Difficulties Systemic Practice and Action Research, Vol. 18, No. 1, February 2005
Retrieved from Springerlink: http://www.springerlink.com.ezproxy.lb.polyu.edu.hk/content/x2t114153p273153/
2)Knights, David; McCabe, Darren. When "life is but a dream": Obliterating politics through business process reengineering Human Relations51. 6 (Jun 1998): 761-798.
Retrieved from ProQuest: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lb.polyu.edu.hk/docview/231475462/134B388216A6774FEF9/1?accountid=16210

Subject:
Importance of pressure groups and stakeholders that influencing BPR

Summary of lecture and motivation of this post:
In lecture 3, we have learnt about the strategic framework and BPR for e-Business. The strategic framework is based on three kinds of analysis techniques and tools in order to formulate the strategy. Among these three techniques, the environmental scanning tools including PEST and SWOT were introduced and discussed deeply and practices are made during class and tutorial lesson. However, the importance of pressure groups and stakeholders are explained in short that I would like to explore more on it.

Findings:
The first article, Business Process Re-engineering in Practice—An Example of A Medium-Sized Slovenian Company in Difficulties illustrates some criteria for selecting the management methods in order to bring an innovative business change management of a Slovenian mid-size company. One of the key issues that affect the re-design of business process is the ownership structure in Slovenia. It was found that 63% of cases are demonstrating an internal ownership, i.e. the employees of the companies have a transformed ownership in majority. Comparing with US, this kind of ownership structure is not common. Based on this unique feature, the company is not efficient due to considerable percentage of internal owners. Unprofessional conduct, vaguely defined situation and the policy of the investment are the threats posed by this kind of organizational structure and therefore, BPR project is not easy to conduct.

The company was facing many difficulties consists of low added value per employee, high business operation costs, low level of production and lacking invention of employee. One argument mentioned in the article, "BPR is efficient if the company's employees themselves suggest and implement measures taken in order to change the established methods of work and business. Here of special importance is their experience of many years and understanding of the essence of the company's processes." shows that employees are one of the key factors that can bring the BPR to success. Another reason that BPR implementation is difficult to conduct is because of the modification of business operation have a direct impact on the owners, management and the employees. If you know that your role may be eliminated after the process re-design, how would you be conscientiously involved in the project? The worst is rejecting such a project!

The second article, When "life is but a dream": Obliterating politics through business process reengineering emphasis on how organization politics affecting the BPR. With regards to the operation of BPR within a medium-sized UK bank, the author argued that BPR is likely to be comprised by and through political relations within and outside the organization, and then BPR will reconstitute organizational forms and norms in return.

The bank mentioned in the article wished to re-engineer its business process by cutting down the branches and expanding the central back office but it faced many kinds of challenges. One challenge that the top management encountered was the tension occurred between the branch and the back office staff. As the branch employees afraid of losing their jobs, they vented their frustrations against the back office. Another important stakeholder, who is the customer, also played an important role in the formulation of strategic framework. They got satisfaction from branch staff and they did not believe in back office staff so that they are not happy to hearing from cutting down the branches.


Conclusions:
The above case studies reflect that the pressure groups and stakeholders not only affecting the implementation of BPR, but also limiting the scope and direction of BPR project. In order to improve business competitiveness, sometimes we need to radically transform the traditionally defined structure of the organization to reduce the influence of stakeholders. This may take account of reducing the number of employees within the organization, or changing the customers' perspective on the business. Every decision made should be considered very carefully; otherwise the BPR would be a sink project. Both of the cases mentioned put many efforts in managing the pressure groups and stakeholders, and they are successful to complete the BPR project.