Chapter 17 Introduction
Final Considerations
Overview
Organizational Response to Business
Drivers
 Business Success Factors
 Reasons Companies Fail When Trying to
Use Information Systems to Compete
 Information System Goals

Organizational Response to Business Drivers
IS Significance
High
Medium
Low
• New Markets, Opportunities and Competitors
• Time, Flexibility and Responsiveness as
Competitive Factors
• Product Customization
• Process Reengineering, Redefining and TQM
• Employee Empowerment and
Cross-functional Teams
• Organization Downsizing, Outsourcing
Business Partnering and Alliances
Figure 17-1
Business Success Factors
I/S Role
Important
Necessary Marginal
• Business Leadership
• Fitting Pieces into the Big Picture
• Organizational Responsiveness and
Resilience
• Realizing that Solving Customer
Problems Requires a Team Approach
• A Strong Company Culture
• Ability and Willingness to Innovate,
Change and Take Risks
• Accomplishing All of These Factors
While Maintaining Necessary Balance
• Good Communication Throughout the
the Entire Organization
Figure 17-2
Why Aren’t All Companies
Successful in Using IS to Compete?
1. Business Reasons
2. Information Technology Reasons
Business Related








Lack of Senior management sponsorship or
support
Poor employee acceptance or use
General resistance to change within the
organization
Poor alignment of IS with the business strategy
Impatience for results
Vision and direction of the business is not clear
Poor business strategy
Poor timing
IT Reasons
Inadequate staffing and/or funding.
 Project size was extremely large.
 Poor project structure.
 Organization lacked experience with IT
(user and/or IS organization)
 Poor systems performance.

Information Systems Goal
• To help achieve organizational goals and
objectives.
• By providing necessary information.
• By providing a communication network.
• By accommodating change within the
organization.
• By approaching this with a general manager’s
perspective.
Conclusions

Understanding the business is no longer a
single dimension.

Reasons for using information system must
parallel with business needs.
Chapter 17
Final Considerations
I regard information technology as a
precocious teenager: full of energy, irreverent,
unpredictable, a source of both joy and
heartache--and frequently in need of close
supervision.
Kent "Oz" Nelson
Chairman and CEO
United Parcel Service
Three Definite Conclusions
1. The way to gain acceptance of information
systems by senior management is to focus on
using it to gain a competitive advantage.
2. The way to capitalize on this opportunity
is thorough a marketing approach.
3. The way to sell anything over time is by
emphasizing value.
There Has Never Been a Better
Time
1. For candor relative to key business and IT issues.
2. For real world success stories versus theory.
3. For business and IS leadership versus techniques
and methodologies.
Company Mentality
Most people buy the premise that managing
information and information systems is a key,
fundamental aspect of running the business.
An issue can be selling the best specific
approach.
The Sell Cycle
• Identify Prospects
• Gain Interest
• Develop Need
• Quantify the Need
• Build the Sale
• Market the Solution
• Gain Commitment
Marketing/Sales Process
Research / Planning / Enabling
Program
Create/
Capture
Demand
Define/
Agree on
Solution
Campaigns
Programs
Gain
Commitment
Delivery Vehicles
Products and Services
Programs
Implement
Targeted
Opportunities
Maintain
Customer
Customer
Satisfaction
and Revenue
An IS Marketing Therefore List
Do an analysis of the major focus and priorities of the CEO.
Determine the 3 - 5 things that your customers spend 75%
of their time doing.
Read the annual report and look for the presence or absence
of information systems endorsements.
Take a hard look at the marketing job being done by the IS
organization.
Build a personal network for competitive information
sources.
IS Competitive Marketing
Ten Commandments
1. Solving customer problems has always been a logical
and successful marketing strategy.
2. During adverse times, your customers really need you.
3. Eighty percent of winning is showing up!
4. Go to your customers with questions, not answers.
5. Remember that quality products and services are the
foundation of competitive success that also includes
leadership of skilled employees using advanced methods.
6. A winning approach should provide long term advantages,
include benefits for the organization as a whole and not distort
the logical balance among major business functions.
7. Successful systems are built on harmony in the work place,
discipline in the work place and automation that is consistent
with the first two factors.
8. Redefine your business, products or services and business
processes based on how this redefines value to customer.
9. The company reward system should endorse and
reinforce the major factors cited above.
10. Watch the arrogance and stay current.
Organizational Response to Business Drivers
IS Significance
High
Medium
Low
• New Markets, Opportunities and Competitors
• Time, Flexibility and Responsiveness as
Competitive Factors
• Product Customization
• Process Reengineering, Redefining and TQM
• Employee Empowerment and
Cross-functional Teams
• Organization Downsizing, Outsourcing
Business Partnering and Alliances
Figure 17-1
Business Success Factors
I/S Role
Important
Necessary Marginal
• Business Leadership
• Fitting Pieces into the Big Picture
• Organizational Responsiveness and
Resilience
• Realizing that Solving Customer
Problems Requires a Team Approach
• A Strong Company Culture
• Ability and Willingness to Innovate,
Change and Take Risks
• Accomplishing All of These Factors
While Maintaining Necessary Balance
• Good Communication Throughout the
the Entire Organization
Figure 17-2
Why Aren’t All Companies
Successful in Using IS to
Compete?
1. Business Reasons
2. Information Technology Reasons
Business Reasons

A lack of senior management sponsorship.

Poor employee acceptance or use.

General resistance to change within the
organization.

Poor alignment of Information Systems with
business strategies.
Business Reasons
• Impatient for results--management and employees.
• Vision and direction of the business was not clear.
• Poor business strategies.
• Good vision, strategy and implementation
but bad timing results in no value to the
customer.
IT Reasons

Inadequate staffing and/or funding.

Project size was extremely large.

Poor project structure.

Organization lacked experience with IT
(user and/or IS organization)

Poor systems performance.
2002 Best Practices Study
The effectiveness (quality and value) and efficiency
(cost and productivity) of the information technology
function across five performance dimensions:
1. Strategic alignment with the business.
2. Ability to partner with internal and external
customers.
3. Use of technology.
4. Organization.
5. Processes.
Study Done By
Hackett Benchmarking (www.answerthink.com/hackett) is
considered the world's foremost best practices benchmarking
firm.
With offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Hudson, Ohio; and
Frankfurt, Germany, Hackett maintains ongoing benchmark
studies in finance, human resources, information technology,
procurement, customer contact centers and related areas.
Study Conclusions
1. Given that technology now permeates every aspect of
business operations, management of the corporate IT
infrastructure has evolved into a CEO-level issue.
2. While it is understandable that in today's economy
companies want to cut or at least slow the rise of IT costs, it
is alarming that most companies persist in viewing IT as a
subsidiary support function, rather than a key competitive
lever.
Study Conclusions
3. Principal improvement strategies utilized by the bestmanaged companies include simplifying and automating
processes from end-to-end and leveraging the maximum
business value from technology investments and Web
infrastructures.
Significant Findings
1. An 85% increase since 1998 in the number of CIOs who
report directly to the CEO indicates that the linkage between
technology and business is growing tighter.
2. With a tight link between the overall business strategy and
the company-wide IT strategy, world-class IT organizations
actually spend 17% less per end-user than their average
counterparts ($12,236 versus $10,111) while delivering
projects to business specification 23% more often.
Significant Findings
3. While outsourcing has been embraced by companies as a
way to keep IT costs in check, for most it has proved to be a
break-even proposition, at best.
4. In highly standardized companies, process costs are
virtually the same, regardless of whether functions are
largely outsourced or completely in-house.
5. For companies with a very low level of standardization,
outsourcing sharply increases process costs.
6. Application development costs at companies with low
standardization levels rise by 300% when outsourced.
Significant Findings
7. Outsourcing adds value only when part of an
overall IT strategy aimed at leveraging maximum efficiency
and effectiveness from people, processes and technology.
8. Greater centralized control of IT operations delivers
significant savings in operational support without necessarily
sacrificing performance.
9. World-class companies with centralized IT organizations
have 24% lower operations costs while enjoying 21% fewer
help-desk calls than their decentralized counterparts.
Additional Findings
1. A comparison of staff at average and world-class IT
organizations indicates that 163% more professionals and
108% more managers in the latter group have advanced
business degrees.
2. Companies are increasingly relying on IT for advice on
improving the business with technology, which requires that
IT staff add an understanding of business issues to its
traditional core competencies.
Additional Findings
3. The consistent use of IT standards enables top-performing
companies to not only trim IT development costs by 41%
(from $661 to $391 annually per end-user), but also reduces
end-user support and training operations costs by 17% (from
$968 to $801 annually per end-user).
4. As companies adopt new technologies, integrate
acquisitions and operate in a more real-time global
environment, the case for standardization becomes even
stronger.
Additional Findings
5. While 100% of organizations with world-class IT process
performance have disaster-recovery plans in place, only 77%
of average companies maintain such a plan, suggesting the
presence of a penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to risk
management in the latter group.
Some Appropriate Questions
1. Do you really believe that information
systems can make your organization more
competitive?
2. Is this a technical or an internal marketing
challenge?
3. What is the current credibility of the IS
organization?
4. What are the basic prerequisites for an
organization to use IS to compete?
More Questions!
5. How do you align information systems with the
goals and objectives of the business?
6. What is the scope of competitively focused
systems?
7. How important is determining the value of IS
within an organization?
8. What are the organizational and personnel
implications of using IS to compete?
9. Does the use of IS to compete ever get easy?
Manufacturing System Guidelines
1. Never implement a new system without
first simplifying the process.
2. Stay around to help the user articulate your
solution to their problem.
3. Automate where appropriate but only if you
have senior management commitment.
4. Implement through user ownership of the
system.
So where are we?
In a period of unprecedented opportunity
driven by business and technological change
made difficult by:
• Competition
• Complexity
• The Pace of the Change
Getting A Job
Student Services and Job Fairs (Westech)
Specific Company Web Pages
Job Search Web Pages
Personal Networking With People You Know
Graduation
A very good time to kick tires and test the job
market.
What are your financial
expectations!
Don’t give a specific number.
Always give a range.
“I just want to be sure that I am being treated
fairly.”
Why him/her and not me!
You can go crazy trying to second guess the
entire interview and hiring process.
Don’t even try but do try to be philosophical
about the entire process.
If it is meant to be, it will happen. If not, there are
other good opportunities.
If philosophical about a job
• You will do better in the interview process.
•You will appear more in control of your efforts to
make sure you find the best fit for yourself.
• You will be more inclined to ask tough questions.
Company Assessment
1. Longer term potential of the company.
2. Your opinion of the people you
interviewed with.
3. The initial job assignment.
4. The offer.
Valued experience for the next two years and the
marketability of that experience.
Tough Questions
• What role does information systems play within the
company?
• How important is the role of information systems?
• How successful have you been in retaining quality
information systems personnel in the recent job market?
• Has job burn-out been a problem within the IS organization?
• What factors play a key role in getting promoted or rewarded
within the information systems organization?
• Has anyone from Information Systems ever moved into
higher level management within the company?
Why do they call it Commencement?
• 90 day sponge strategy.
• Continue to develop your big picture mentality.
• Pick two areas of expertise.
• Everyone should have a pitch.
• Improve oral communications skills like
Ollie Wight did.
Commencement!?
• Really understand the desired mode of
operation versus the specific tasks of a job.
• Develop a personal network.
• Develop a reading material profile.
What about an MBA?
If you are not happy with your current job and more
importantly your career path, then a full time MBA
program is an excellent fork in the road.
It allows you to repot yourself and build a whole new
set of personal networking contacts.
Realize that Stanford, UC Berkeley and UCLA are three of
the five toughest MBA programs in the world to gain
acceptance.
If you are happy with what and how you are doing, then
wait for two years and consider an evening MBA
program like 80% of those in those doing this.
Why not a full-time MBA?
Tuition
Other Student Costs
Living Costs
Lost Opportunity Costs
Information Systems Goal
• To help achieve organizational goals and
objectives.
• By providing necessary information.
• By providing a communication network.
• By accommodating change within the
organization.
• By approaching this with a general manager’s
perspective.
Leadership is your personal challenge,
whatever your organizational role.
My Job as an IS professional
is to help my company compete!