Enterprise ICT (EICT)

Strategy
How is it related with Business
Strategy ?

@ 2015, D. Saha, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), India

Overall Effect of
Digitalization

Businesses rely more and more on ICT

Automation (efficiency)
Info management (quicker decision making)
Reduced complexity
Rapid innovation

Result: Businesses accumulate Digital Assets

What are these digital assets?
How to manage these digital assets?
@ 2015, D. Saha, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), India

Digital Assets
Digital tools & Data
Technology implemented & info gathered
Almost common across businesses

Digital biz processes

Enabled by easy access to tools & data
Workflows may be different even within verticals

Digital channels
To connect to stakeholders (employees, investors,
partners and customers)
Evolving constantly
@ 2015, D. Saha, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), India

Biz needs to manage this asset

Can we use ICT to manage it?
Yes

That brings us to an interesting recursive situation

To manage digital asset we accumulate more digital asset

ICT

@ 2015, D. Saha, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), India

Management

Design for Management

(DfM)

So we should create digital assets from the very

beginning in such a way as that their management
becomes easy and handy with ICT tools
This is DfM
Its a TOP-DOWN approach

DfM is the second crux of this course

We shall try to view every article from within this
framework
Once you understand it, the trash e-mails from top
management will make sense to you
Or why your brilliant idea was shelved by your team leader
@ 2015, D. Saha, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), India

Design for Management

Top down
Not bottom up

Design thinking
http://hbr.org/2008/06/design-thinking/

Ideal: Design effort 90%

Management effort 10%

Real life: Design effort 30%

Management effort 70%
Little scope for improvement aka innovation !!!
@ 2015, D. Saha, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), India

Design Thinking
A methodology that imbues the full spectrum
of innovation activities with a human-centered
design ethos (HBR).
By this I mean that innovation is powered by
a thorough understanding, through direct
observation, of what people want and need in
their lives and what they like or dislike about
the way particular products are made,
packaged, marketed, sold, and supported.
@ 2015, D. Saha, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), India

Design for Management

(DfM)

A methodology that imbues the full spectrum

of innovation activities with a manager
(human)-centered design ethos (HBR).
Innovation is powered by a thorough understanding,
through direct observation, of what managers (people)
want and need in their companies (lives) and what they
like or dislike about the way particular products and/or
services are made, packaged, marketed, sold, and
supported.
But if ICT centre is always thinking about how to
manage technology, when can it think about managers?
@ 2015, D. Saha, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), India

Example
You as an ICT manager have been asked to
advise a BU head for the specification of the
smart phones to be purchased for its sales force.
How would you go about it?

@ 2015, D. Saha, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), India

Design for Management

Business Goals

Business Strategy
EICT Strategy
TOP
DOWN

Enterprise ICT
Architecture
ICT Infrastructure
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BusinessIT strategic alignment maturity:

predicting the impact on transformational strategy
and business results, Elby M. Nash, IEEE IT
Professional, 2009.

REFER TO ARTICLE 5 IN
THE HANDOUT
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ICT Investment &

Productivity

Higher levels of ICT investment improve

business productivity, provided these
investments are complemented with changes in
operational strategy, management practices or
work structures (e.g., organization).
Impact of these complementary factors on
business performance can be understood as
harmonization of a firms business and ICT
goals and objectives, i.e., strategic alignment.
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Biz.-ICT SA MM

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Alignment does matter

Strategic alignment maturity model (SAMM)
posits that higher overall levels of strategic
alignment maturity better enable business
transformation.
A firm having a higher level of strategic
alignment maturity should demonstrate better
overall economic performance than its industry
peers.
Refer to Fig 1 of the article
Did you feel it in your previous organization?
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Model & Criteria

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Symptoms of Poor Alignment

Poor understanding and rapport between ICT
management and business
Ongoing conflicts between business and ICT
Continual questions about the value of ICT
Lack of vision and strategy (business + ICT)
No seat at the business table for ICT
Projects not used, canceled or late
Declining business productivity
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Findings to note
Firm-level sales and level of Strategic
Alignment maturity shown to be positively
correlated,
although additional research needs to be done to
clarify the direction of causality

Alignment gap and firm-level productivity

and profitability shown to be positively
correlated.

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EICT Strategy: How and

What
Implementation

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EICT Strategy
High level decisions about the strategic role of
EICT in the business
How do the business principles translate to ICT
principles that guide ICT decision making?
What is the role of ICT in the business?
What are desirable ICT behaviours?
How will ICT be funded?

EICT Strategies are to be decided by CIO along

with other CXOs/BU leaders
Ref: Davenport, Hammer & Metsisto 1989, Broadbent & Weill 1997
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Features
EICT vision and strategy must be in line with
the companys business vision and strategy
Alignment

So EICT strategy must be derived from

business strategy by senior executives and top
ICT management
Top-down

The role of CIO and his team is most crucial to

ensure the above alignment
ICT leadership
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EICT Strategy
Operationalization

Three major domains:

EICT Architecture

Enterprise-wide Architectural Control

ICT Infrastructure
Technology to be Implemented

ICT Investment
Project Prioritization and Funding

Once architecture and infrastructure are

planned, the budget must be approved by CEO
[Ref: MIT Sloan CISR Research]
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Definitions
EICT architecture
At the enterprise level, it is the organizing logic for
applications, data, infrastructure technologies, as
captured in a set of policies and technical choices,
intended to enable the firms business strategy

ICT infrastructure
It is the collection of technology platforms, offthe-shelf or customized, deployed according to the
architecture defined at the higher level to best suit
the processes intended to run on them
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Responsibility
Business Strategy

CEO

EICT Strategy

CIO

Enterprise ICT
Architecture

CIOs
Office

ICT Infrastructure
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This is not a one-time task

Business Strategy
EICT Strategy

Change in Biz.
Strategy
New
technologies

Enterprise ICT
Architecture
ICT Infrastructure
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What decides EICT strategy?

Business Strategy

EICT Strategy

State-of-art
ICT

Purview of this course

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