COURSE 040 | 2-DAY SESSION
Harnessing IT for Business Success

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Course Outline

Section I: Building the Right Base: The role technology should have in your firm

Also, Information Technology can quickly and significantly alter a competitive field of play and has the capability of being your organization's primary tool in achieving strategic maneuverability. In this section you will discuss major business strategies and detail the five ways companies align IT with business. The ultimate goal is to present IT as a "black box" in that it is not about how the technology works, but about how it fits with and is utilized to meet your overall strategic goals. Since business functions rely heavily upon IT systems, a lack of fundamental IT knowledge will significantly reduce your ability to define and drive successful business strategy.

I. Business Strategies

a. Cost Leaders
b. Innovation Leaders
c. Service Leaders

II. IT/Business Alignment Strategies

a. Functional System: automation of individual business functions
b. Cross-Functional Systems: sharing information between business functions
c. Reengineering the Business: creating IT systems that are central to business strategies
d. Reimagining the Business: radical reengineering of business to exploit IT capabilities
e. Create and Exploit Business Opportunities: use of IT to directly confront and overcome business competitors

III. Strategic Planning and Offensive Business Strategy

a. Offensive business strategy
- Attrition
i- Maneuver
b. Utilizing IT as a maneuver strategy
- Divert attention, alter plans, confuse decision-making and exhaust the competition

IV. Technology from a Strategic Perspective

a. Technology as the "black box"
- Focus on use not function
b. Strategic Perspective
- View VoIP as a strategic tool
- View Web-based Applications as a strategic tool

Section 2: Fitting Information Technology into Business Structure

Learn the skills to evaluate the economic system in use at your firm. Understand the difference between using an in-house or outsourced structure. Learn to successfully align and motivate your IT department to become a highly efficient organization.

I. Models of IT Economic Systems

a. Market-based
b. Centralized economies

II. Criteria for Evaluation

a. Measuring Performance
b. Goal congruence
c. Sarbanes-Oxley issues
d. Business continuity

III. Skills and Tools to Improve Your IT Economic System

Section 3: Understanding and Communicating with IT Departments

This section provides an overview of the how IT Departments are structured and the roles and responsibilities within each group. You will learn what each team can provide you and how to get the best results. Stop communicating improperly and with the wrong people, wasting valuable time and money.

I. Structure and Make up of IT Departments

a. Management
b. Project Management and Analysts
c. Network Side
d. Telecommunications Side
e. Applications/Database side
f. E-business

II. Communicating with IT Professionals

a. How IT Professionals view management
i. Layer 8 syndrome
b. Partnering and communication strategies

Case Study 1: Determining and evaluating your Firm's IT Economic System

In this case study you will gain the skills necessary to evaluate your IT department's economic governance. Using this information you will be able to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the department as a first step towards its strategic realignment. Use the tools and information provided in this case study immediately in your company.

Section 4: The Components of Information Technology

What are the different choices you have available and what can those choices provide your organization? This section is not about how each of these technologies work; it is about how these technologies can be utilized to provide value to a business. In this section you will learn what each technology provides an organization and how best to utilize that value.

I. LANs

a. Moving Data
- Ethernet
- TCP/IP
- Routers and Switches
b. Network Operating Systems
- Microsoft
- UNIX
- Open Source

II. WANs

a. Inter-exchange
b. Last mile
c. Public vs. Private
d. Quality of Service

III. Using the Network

a. The Internet
- Web-based applications
- Database Systems
- e-Commerce
- ERP
- Data Warehousing
- Data Mining
b. Storage
- DAS and NAS
- SAWs
- Management
c. Convergence
- Legacy Systems
- PBX- Centrix- Key Systems
- VoIP (and information on Toll-by-pass & IP PBX)
- Quality of Service
d. Wireless
- Cell phones
- PDAs
- Wireless Data
e. Security
- Policy
- Firewalls
- Intrusions Detection
- Assessment and Vulnerability
- VPNs

Section 5: Build Strategic and Competitive Advantages Using IT

How are you currently using your IT technologies? Learn how to leverage strategic advantages from the technologies you already own. You don't always need to buy more to get more.

I. The Concept of Comparative Advantage

II. Overview of Corporate Planning

a. Goals and objectives
b. IT Strategies within the Corporate context

III. Overview of Business Strategies

a. Creating new advantages
b. Enlarging existing advantages
c. Attacking competitor advantages

IV. Categories of Advantages

V. The Role of IT in Creating Advantages

Case Study 2: Identifying IT Strategic Advantages in an Organization

Build better business systems with the technology available to you. By reviewing your company's current portfolio of IT technologies, you will learn how to classify technologies and create IT business advantages. Build strategies around today's hottest technologies: Wireless, VoIP, Open Source, Collaboration, Messaging, and Video Conferencing. Use the tools and data from this case study immediately in your firm as a blue print to execute business strategies.

Section 6: Long Range IT-Centric Business Planning

Is your organization planning for or reacting to technological change? Learn how to integrate IT technology into your long-range strategic plan. Understand the different levels of strategic planning and integrate your firm’s digital capabilities into that planning.

I. What does technology alignment mean?

a. Strategic themes
b. Key business processes

II. How is IT alignment accomplished?

a. Technology models
b. Service models
c. Client models

Case Study 3: The Long-Term Scan

Your firm needs a far-sighted broad view of trends in technology and customer needs. Learn how to perform a long-term technology scan, the first step in IT planning. From this case study, you will receive a methodology and set of tools to conduct Long-term scans that enable sound and successful long term planning.

Section 7: Introduction to Information Economics

This section introduces the basic quantitative/qualitative tools of Information Economics. Are you using the right tools to evaluate your IT options? Learn how Information Economics can take you beyond simple Cost-Benefit Analysis to a proper appreciation of IT Value.

I. What is Information Economics?

a. Information Costs
b. Information Worth
c. What Information Economics is not

II. The value of IT

a. Cost benefit approach
b. Economic impact approach

III. Information Economics and Strategic Planning

a. Decision-Making Criteria
b. Expanding Cost-Benefit Analysis
c. Setting Priorities

Case Study 4: Information Economics Analysis

Traditional Cost-Benefit Analysis often skews IT analysis by favoring identifiable costs over harder-to-identify benefits. Learn how to adapt your Cost-Benefit Analysis to true Economic Value analysis. Stop making decisions without all the necessary detail. See outside the scope of the typical return on investment rational. Disruption technologies can only be challenged when viewing investment from an Economic Value perspective.