1. Making the Business Case
Achieving Strategic Alignment

2. Why Establish team credibility Sell the project
New project
Pilot project
Support design trade-off decisions
Define evaluation metrics

3. What is the business case?
Alignment: How does the project fit into organization goals?
Impact: Where does the project impact organization processes?
Contribution: What contribution does the project make?
Metrics: How will we define success?

4. Strategic View: Who is the organization?
Vision
Mission
Objective
Tactic

5. Tactical Alignment Business Objective Business Tactic IT Objective
IT Tactic

6. Support Activities Primary Activities
Firm Infrastructure (general management, accounting, finance, strategic planning)
Support Activities
Human Resource Management
(recruiting, training, development)
Technology Development
(R&D< product and process improvement)
Procurement
(purchasing of raw materials, machines, supplies)
Inbound
Logistics
(raw
materials
handling
and
warehous-
ing)
Outbound
Logistics
(warehous-
ing and
distribution
of finished
product)
Marketing
and Sales
(advertising,
promotion,
pricing,
channel
relations)
Operations
(machine
assembling,
testing)
Service
(installation,
repair,
parts)
Primary Activities 7

7. Value Chain Model
Chain of basic activities that add to firm’s products or services
Products can be services or goals (particularly for public organizations)
Each product has its own value chain
Primary activities
Secondary activities 8

8. Value Chain Primary Activities
Inbound
Outbound
Operations
Marketing and Sales
After-Sale Services 9

9. Value Chain Support Activities
Technology development
Procurement
Human Resources Management
Management Control
accounting/finance
coordination
general management
central planning 10

10. Generic System Contributions
Automate*
Informate* Up
Down
Transform*
Discover
* Scott Morton (1991); and S. Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine (New York: Basic Books, 1988).

11. Automation Information Systems
Replace human effort with machine effort
Reduce the number of workers
Expand the amount of work that can be done by the current work force
Expandable and non-expandable tasks
Move the automation boundary
Improved accuracy
Customer empowerment
Improve organization response time
Increase focus on core competencies

12. Informating Information Systems
Provide information to upper management
Reduce the layers of management
Improve the span of control
Improve decision making ability
Provide information to operational personnel
Empower workforce

13. Transformational Information Systems
Radical changes in an organization’s business processes (Business Process Reengineering)
Radical changes in an organization’s structure
Radical changes in an industry’s value streams

14. Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
Completely changes manner in which business is done
Fewer steps, shorter cycle times
Complete, more expert handling of events
Not incremental improvement
Typically uses IT as an enabler
Involves discontinuous thinking 21

15. Characteristics of BPR
Combining jobs
Empowering employees
Jobs done simultaneously
Customizing product/service
Work performed where most logical
Single point of customer contact 22

16. Transformational Information Systems
Radical changes in an organization’s structure
reduce layers of management
empower front-line workers
loosely couple work units
Radical changes in an industry’s value streams
disintermediation
create new markets