Introduction
Information Technology refers to both the software and hardware that are used to stockpile, salvage and control information (both tangible and intangible). Strategy refers to a set of analytic technique for understanding and influencing your company’s position in the market places.
Discussion
Looking back over the years at many cases of business venture failure, one striking observation can be made; in the overwhelming majority of cases failures can be predicted in advance.Infact,more than 90 percent of all business failures can be traced and attributed directly to causes known in advance,known,but ignored. For example, the failure of B2B exchanges-as stated in the article by Mohanbir Sawhney;Execution of the concept Is key to success-and even the bankruptcies reported each year in many companies probably represent only a small corner in the huge graveyard of total venture failures.
Most failing ventures are never reported as such, but are instead simply loss entries on otherwise healthy income statements projects abandoned quietly after substantial investments. While nine out of ten business ventures failures can by virtue of hindsight, be attributed to assume that at least one-half, and possibly three-fourths of all venture failures can be responsibly predicted in advance. The reasons for failure are almost never subtle, and seldom represent any actual misjudgements.The reasons are generally well known, but they usually go unjudged in any really objective or analytical sense. They are simply ignored in favor of certain overriding considerations; such inclined judgments receive little help at most banks if the venture involves a commercial loan.
In the era of IT, convincing evidence can be compiled to show that most companies already have sufficient latent knowledge to be able to prejudge the relative success of most new ventures with remarkable accuracy. It is largely a matter of collecting, organizing, and properly utilizing the companies’ best information, experience and judgment and confirming with research only when necessary. Most organization make use of technology to run their business but top companies exploit technology to give them the competitive edge. Many senior executives are beginning to realize the importance of IT projects and the need to engage external expertise on such areas.
Moreover with HP software solutions for BSM, one can align your IT operations organization with the objectives of the business and help it more effectively execute its strategic initiatives. One will have the visibility to comprehend together the technological issues behind infrastructure dealings and the company service issues that those procedures impact. This helps one communicate with the business in a language it understands and improve alignment.
Certain amount of technical know-how is required for success in virtually every business. Even in non-technology businesses, technology has a significant impact. Many of the complex problems confronting a company’s management can be solved only by taking into account a combination of technical economic, managerial, political, and social considerations. Technology provides the basis for every industry, and management must stay abreast of the new technological developments in order to keep up with competition. The huge quantities of information generated in itself technological solutions.
Even the small retail business or service shop is at a competitive disadvantage if it is unable to apply the latest technology in sales analysis, inventory planning, financial control and cash flow forecasting. The factors involved in technology category include design, engineering, materials and technique. Cost of over-provisioning services and storage in an IT infrastructure and how unnecessary cost can be eliminated through combining server virtualization technology and utility storage.
Strategising is much more than just visioning,forecasting,virtualization and planning. In the new swiftly changing financial system, all substantive issue of policy have been redefined as issues of implementation. The modern subject of business strategy is analytic techniques for understanding better, and so influencing a company’s position in its actual and potential market place.
Conclusion
Most business people are so busy working for their business or in their business that they never find time to work on their business. Thus they fail to anticipate what might happen or what they might be able to make happen. Unless you regularly schedule time to work on your business and answer critical questions, you’ll never achieve your stretch goals. To be successful today, companies must become competitor-oriented.
They must pursue the right competitive strategy to outwit their rivals, they should avoid strengths of your competitors and look for weak points in their positions and then launch marketing attacks against those points. Companies should have prolonged benefit of implementing some unique value creating strategy based on unique combination of internal organizational resources and capabilities that cannot be replicated by competitors.
The business strategy and IT strategy to be formulated should reflect on environmental analysis lead to fulfillment of the organizational mission and result in reaching the organizational objectives. Though some organizations resist change and try to maintain the status quo, sometimes even if it yields unsatisfactory results. For example in the article; Execution of the concept is key to success by Sawhney, one might conclude from the evidence ofB2B exchange was fundamentally blemished. However its not concept of the exchange that was flawed but the execution of that concept, leaving investors asking inconvenient questions about the viability of the business model.
The main cause of this failure of B2B exchanges maybe was inefficiency in implementing the ideal concept moreover most B2B interactions involves intense collaboration on planning, forecasting, design and problem solving which may have been overlooked. The company was faced with strategic process hardships in its operation and this could have been attributed maybe by lack of special tools which are necessary in formulating strategies which include critical question analysis, SWOT analysis, and business portfolio analysis, porter’s model for industry analysis and resource-based model.
References
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Barkley, B.T, 2001, Customer driven project management; New York. McGraw-Hill Companies.
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Moxon, P, 1993, Building a better team; England. Gower publisher.