Managing Information Technology Essay Example for Free

Managing Information Technology EssayQuestion 1 What would be your prioritized list of IT investments? Four IT investments assume to be prioritized 1. 2. 3. 4. Ecommerce Web gross sales Aligning the divers(a) systems (legacy, SAP, ERP) together. Hire relationship managers Make IT a partner1. After only 3 years, KLs Web sales have reached $156M, equalizing its in store sales, and directly represent 15% of total sales. This is very encouraging and exciting. KL needs to continue to invest in Ecommerce Web sales in target to continue this peachy growth. Selling via the Internet should be a priority because its cheaper than your ordinary brick and mortar sales points, there is less overhead expense, and this market is growing exponenti altogethery. The party should work towards gaining the most market share possible developing an industry leading website, seasonably and dependable delivery, and customer service. Accomplishing the above means getting all the play along shar ing information and data more efficiently (see point 2).2. KL has a complex IT infrastructure with various systems in use around the world. The military issue is a frustrated bunch of employees upset with the fact that communication data sharing is awful. To remedy this the company needs to invest more in cooking to get the whole company, including the USA, to use SAP as soon as possible.3. Assign/hire relationship managers to improve information sharing, facilitate plans, priorities, communications, and relationships, and in travel get the whole system to work together.4. To avoid such problems in the future, KL needs to make IT a partner in the decision making process. In other words, the company needs to best involve IT in company strategy and tactical planning. With the IT team, the company needs to develop and define an Enterprise operational Model and Architecture that include business strategy, current IT assessment, IT strategy and IT plans.Question 2 Would your colleag ues on the exe stingive committee agree with your selection and prioritization? The above priorities should be well received because they solve or improve many of the frustrating employees around the company. This answer will look at each division (upper management, sales marketing, order fulfillment and distribution, and ITS) and see why the four IT priorities should be well received by the executive committee. The KL upper management is on record stating that the company has IT challenges around coordinating the various, and at times conflicting, business priorities across the enterprise.We sure could use better IT tools for this as well as ready access to timely performance data., CEO Joseph Campbell. In addition, COO Jens McCreary stated that the company needs to improve global supply-chain management and leverage the expertise to outpace out competitors and cut our operating costs Considering these quotes its safe to assume that the CEO and COO should be accepting of these fou r IT priorities because will want to see IT provide better services in order to reach their goals. The products, manufacturing and distribution divisions of the company want to see SAP standardized and compatible across the company in order to better share information.Priorities 2 and 3 should please this division. Sales marketing hope to see inter-operating unit and communications and coordination issues to be resolved and they need real time data. Priorities 1, 2 and 3 should encourage the sales and marketing team. The order fulfillment and distribution divisions need capabilities to forecast sales and manage our product and cash flows need to be more competitive.They want to be able to deliver in a J.I.T. basis (optimize effectiveness) and have data integration between the legacy systems, SAP, Oracle, etcetera These issues should improve with priorities 2 and 3 and this making these priorities acceptable to this division. Finally, the information technology services (ITS) claim that not spending enough on IT (more spent on production and sales), and Web and ecommerce should be priority. Priorities 1 to 4 all favor the ITS team, and therefore should be well received.