Chap 5: Organizational Structures that Support Strategic Initiatives

Organizational Structures

-          Employees must work closely together to develop strategic initiatives that create competitive advantages

-          Ethics and security are two fundamental building blocks that organizations must base their businesses upon

IT roles and responsibilities

Chief Information Officer

-          Oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and objectives

-          Manager, leader, communicator

Chief Technology Officer – responsible to ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability,   and reliability of IT

Chief Security Officer – responsible for ensuring the security of IT systems

Chief Privacy Officer – responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information

Chief Knowledge Officer – responsible for collecting, maintaining and distributing the organization's knowledge

Gap between Business Personnel and IT Personnel

1.       Each personnel only expertise in their own areas so this causes a communications gap.

2.       Ways to improve communication :

-          Each personnel must seek to increase their understanding of other areas

-          CIO must ensure effective communication between all departments

Ethics

-          The principles and standards that guide our behavior toward other people.

-          Privacy is a major ethical issue.

-          Other issues are intellectual property, copyright, fair use doctrine, pirated software and

Security

-          Organizational information is intellectual capital, it must be protected.

-          Information security – the protection of information from misuse by persons

-          E-business automatically creates tremendous information security risks for organizations

Chap 4: Measuring the Success of Strategic Initiatives

Key Performances Indicator

-          Measures that are tied to business drivers

-          Metrics are detailed measures that feed KPI's

-          Performance metrics fall into the nebulous area of business intelligence that requires input from IT and business professionals.

Efficiency IT metrics

-          Measures the performance of the IT system itself

-          Focus on technology and include throughput, transaction speed, system availability, information accuracy, web traffic, reponse time.

Effectiveness IT metrics

-          Measures the impact IT has on business processes and activities

-          Focus on organization's goals, strategies and objectives, and include usability, customer satisfaction, conversion rates, financial.

* Regardless of what is measured, how it is measured and whether it is for the sake of efficiency or effectiveness, there must be a BENCHMARKS.

* It is inefficient to implement internet security since it slows down processing, however it is effective to implement internet security.

Metrics for Strategic Initiatives

-          Web site metrics: abandoned registrations, abandoned shopping cards, click-through, conversion rate, cost-per-thousand, page exposure, total hits, unique visitors

-          SCM metrics: back order, customer order promised cycle time, customer order actual cycle time, inventory replenishment cycle time, inventory turns

-          CRM metrics: measures user satisfaction and interaction, sales metrics, service metrics, marketing metrics

-          BPR and ERP metrics: measures and manage strategic initiatives

Chap 3 : Strategic Initiatives for Implementing Competitive Advantage

Supply Chain Management

-          Management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain

-          To maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability

Component:                  

1.       Supply chain strategy

2.       Supply chain partner

3.       Supply chain operation

4.       Supply chain logistics

Effective and efficient SCM systems :

-          Decrease buyer power, threat of substitute product or services, threat of new entrants.

-          Increase supplier power

Customer Relationship Management

-          Managing all aspects of a customer's relationship with an organization

-          Increase customer loyalty and retention

-          Organization profitability

CRM can enable an organization to:

1.       Identify types of customer

2.       Design individual customer marketing campaigns

3.       Treat customer as an individual

4.       Understand customer behaviors

Business Process Reengineering

-          Analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises

-          Purpose of BPR is to make all business processes best-in-class

-          BPR looks at taking a different path

Enterprise Resources Planning

-          Integrates all departments and functions into a single IT system

-          Employees can make decisions by viewing enterprisewide information on all business operations.