Making the Business
Case
Achieving Strategic Alignment
Why
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
Establish team credibility
Sell the project
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New project
Pilot project
Support design trade-off decisions
Define evaluation metrics
What is the business case?
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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?
Strategic View:
Who is the organization?

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Vision
Mission
Objective
Tactic
Tactical Alignment
Business Objective
Business Tactic
IT Objective
IT Tactic
Support Activities
Primary Activities
Firm Infrastructure
(general management, accounting, finance, strategic planning)
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
warehousing)
Operations
(machine
assembling,
testing)
Outbound
Logistics
(warehousing and
distribution
of finished
product)
Marketing
and Sales
(advertising,
promotion,
pricing,
channel
relations)
Service
(installation,
repair,
parts)
Value Chain Model

Chain of basic activities that add to
firm’s products or services


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Products can be services or goals
(particularly for public organizations)
Each product has its own value chain
Primary activities
Secondary activities
Value Chain Primary Activities





Inbound
Outbound
Operations
Marketing and Sales
After-Sale Services
Value Chain Support Activities




Technology development
Procurement
Human Resources Management
Management Control




accounting/finance
coordination
general management
central planning
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).
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


Move the automation boundary




Expandable and non-expandable tasks
Improved accuracy
Customer empowerment
Improve organization response time
Increase focus on core competencies
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
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
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
Characteristics of BPR



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
Combining jobs
Empowering employees
Jobs done simultaneously
Customizing product/service
Work performed where most logical
Single point of customer contact
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