LECTURE 1 (VIDEO) “There is nothing more practical than a good theory”. It is really important to be based on the theory when giving professional advice as a consultant. The scope of this course DBIS is primarily MANAGERIAL. “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. What the world needs is people who have come alive”. “DOES IT MATTER?” Organizations are implementing the default configurations because they have to feed specific processes of the organizations and in that sense IT matters. Yes, because there are many projects that still do not live up to the expectations and IT is a great tool to help achieve these expectations. According to Randstad, “it is very clearly it is one of our most important strategic drivers for the successing”. Moore’s law. Innovation technology allows processes, services and products to be develop in an exponential way until becoming disruptive. The same happens with the costs of this technology that also drops exponentially. The number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years LECTURE 2 (VIDEO) Point of view as Deloitte or Deloitte Digital. When looking for what it’s happening in the market. They really seek three different themes: 1. Digital & Physical. A lot of companies are still talking about multi and omni-channel strategies, that they want to move from physical to digital. But we need to start thinking about creating none-channel strategy because the other strategies are not realistic anymore when we look at consumer expectations. 2. Everything is Branding. It’s about making it true and showing the client, not to scream it from ads and billboards. 3. Winning the customer. To start owning the relationships, data… To find out what makes them happy, what they really need and how to really engage with them, bringing them products that enriches their lives. Nowadays, platforms play quite an important role, since that thanks to this, firms can link both providers and customers while they have the control over them. Besides, they can collect relevant and useful data of their customers. Case of a company providing digitalized experience. NEST. It is a company created by people from Apple that allows to create the environment that a clients wants. For example, if I’m driving home and my car connects to Nest app, it takes a signal from where I am and Nest starts to communicate with other systems at my home, and starts putting the light in the settings that I want or the washing machine starts at the time that I want. Scale it from the edge. It means to start scaling little by little in a separate way (separated from the business core) and then start bringging it together. LECTURE 3 (VIDEO) TECHNOLOGY CENTRIC VIEW of IT in BUSINESS (The company is a customer support group) Regarding the technology centric view of IT in Business, the speaker says security is one of the most important things they are focused on currently in their business. Regarding the invariants, he says that the trick is to have a platform and to join with others to make it bigger (integrating features from other platforms and the other way around). That is to say, IT platforms from growing functionalities thanks to modularity. It enables a company to grow in a much faster way. Also digital representation, that is to say, the information that is separated from its artifacts enables companies to exchange relevant data that could help both grow in a much faster way than in the past. All the data is collected in the cloud and it is easier to share, collect and manage this data, this makes IT develop in an exponential way (moore’s law, computing power), data gets more and more important and accurate and it can be used in a plenty of ways. And there is also where technology mediated spaces and interfaces (modularity) comes into play. When integrating different platforms (cooperation with other companies) there is a greater probability for success, since if a platform is integrated with yours success, it also makes you benefit from it and you end up winning or succeeding. You are doing MORE with LESS. The fact that there is not a universal language of programming, hinders the work and development in some aspects. If there would be a universal language of programming (e.g. English ) it would be easier for companies to develop their platforms and businesses in a faster and easier way. PRACTITIONER 2 With “Scrum product development” they are able to develop a better ERP service for their customers in a simpler way, since they go step by step (they do deviate and don’t go straight) and check and show the project progress once a month to assure everything is going fine. It is not a project designed and deployed from start to finish (without checking it since you start). LECTURE 4 (VIDEO) Business-IT Alignment. Unraveling The Paradox IT is often used to following the business, which means that instead, IT driven innovation is almost impossible. Therefore, IT Alignment often limits the capacity to respond rapidly to market changes. IT governance: the processes that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organization to achieve its goals. IT architecture: A series of principles, guidelines or rules used by a firm to direct (manage/address) the process of acquiring, building, modifying and interfacing (interconnection) IT resources throughout the enterprise. A modular organization structure occurs when the decision making is decentralized among the partners of a group of companies. Intellectual alignment: It is an alignment at a strategic level, an alignment between the business and IT strategies. It is to write and elaborate both business and IT strategies that can match and be linked with each other. In theoretical terms it is easy to say it, the problem arises when companies start implementing these strategies. E.g. Two emerging companies found their strategies and business models were quite similar, thus, they decided to integrate both companies in one. Although strategically they were almost identical, concerning the operational layer and in detail level (customers data, operational data…) there were a lot of differences that hinder the IT alignment. Therefore, we can see that it’s easier to align strategies at a theoretical level than it is when you start implementing those strategies. Social alignment: The state in which business and IT executives within an organizational unit understand and are committed to the business and IT mission, objectives, and plans. However, recent studies show that it is not just about business and IT executives, but about the actual collaboration between people in IT and people in the business. So, it is really important the interconnection between these two parties. The problem arises when neither party cares about the other, they just focus on their workforce. Besides, often IT architecture is quite complex to understand and this hinders the interconnection between business people with IT. Thus, having the architecture tidy makes work and alignment easier for both. Social alignment is an important aspect to be researched more in depth and that has a direct impact in the intellectual alignment. Intellectual alignment: (Impedes agility) - Increases organizational inertia: Firms tendency to maintain stability of their organizational arrangements such as strategy and structure in spite of environmental change. - Resource rigidity: failure to change resource investment patterns - resource dependency, bunding, and sunk costs. - E.g. (external parties that you are collaborating with that have their own systems and processes which makes it difficult to change once you have established all these) - Routine rigidity: failure to change organizational processes and business models. - path dependence, cognitive inertia (they show resistance to change) Social alignment: (Increases agility) - Facilitates Emergent Coordination: The contextualized process of input regulation and interaction articulation to realize a collective performance based on informal communication and mechanisms. - Through collaboration, shared domain knowledge, social capital As they actively collaborate, this tends to increase agility. Social alignment also has a moderating influence on the relationship between intellectual alignment and inertia (it lessens inertia). Conclusion: Business and IT alignment can have both positive and negative effects within a company. These effects can be moderated depending on the alignment that a company chooses to carry out.
