Relationship between Business Strategy and IT Strategy Essay

The race between a business and its IT resources extends removed beyond the use of IT as a mere tool in proper execution of business operations. Instead, both are linked deeply. The relationship toss offs with the alignment of Corporate Strategic Planning (CSP) with Information Systems Planning (ISP). find an entitys mission and goals and bring outing competitive strategies to meet those goals is CSP. This is an iterative procedure. ISP is a systematic way of establishing the information needs of an organization.ISP withal includes developing systems, technologies and databases at a time these needs are known. ISP is successful only when it is done keeping in mind the mission, goals and competitive system determined through CSP (Hoffer, George, and Valacich, 1994). The processes of CSP and ISP run analog and involve three move. First, current organizational position is described on with the current IS processes, data, human resource and techno tenacious inventory. Secondly , the desired future narrate of organization is determined. This simultaneously yields required future IS line.Third step is to develop a strategic plan to achieve the envisioned future state. ISP plays a crucial role by identifying the schedule of go throughs to undertake to bring IS situation in line with corporate position (Hoffer, George, and Valacich, 1994). With this framework laid out, we provide answer the questions about Lowrys aspiration of collaborative computing and the construct of B2B ex lurch. Were there problems with strategy formulation? In case of collaborative computing, the strategy was seriously flawed due to these reasons.Jack Lowry was so enthusiastic in pursuit of dream that he failed to properly determine whether the people alfresco Goldman were lively for much(prenominal) an ambitious project yet. He dedicated cardinal years and millions of dollars in laying the ground without finding a collaborator willing to make a commitment (Worthen, 2001) bec ause his judgment of immensity of the project for Goldman and its coadjutors was erroneous. Collaborative computing was undoubtedly an idea worth materializing. However, it was ahead of its time.A comp either in a different position may aim had much better results since Goldman resided much lower in come out range and did non possess the leverage to bring about an industry full change. It required a deep overhaul of entire industry including supply chain, manufacturers and customers. Therefore, the strategy had serious problems in timing, position and power to implement. Same is real for the case of B2B trading exchanges. The concept of bringing together suppliers and customers in a marketplace is undoubtedly very useful but the strategy utilize for the purpose was not formulated properly.It failed to identify the real problem want of software and services to make those exchanges useful (Sawhney, 2002) and focused on creating exchanges. The fall off approach would have b een to provide software and services to facilitate quislingism between all stakeholders and the exchanges could come automatically as a logical consequence. Were there problems with strategy implementation? Lowry used Goldman as a research laboratory to work on his collaborative computing dream and used millions of dollars in the process.Since Goldman did not hold the position in the industry to effect the change envisioned by Lowry, the implementation of his strategy had this basic problem. For automotive industry, companies such as GM or Ford from USA or Toyota from lacquer were in much better position to implement Lowrys dream because of their dominance in the industry and the dependence of entire industry on these giants. They also had advantage of being on top of the chain since they were the penult buyers of the industry and had direct contact with consumers, the ultimate buyers of finished products.The case for B2B exchanges also had flawed execution of the idea since they set out to solve a problem that did not even exist. They had to re position themselves and change strategies to start getting positive results. They changed their focus from creating a trade exchange which was not needed to solving individual business problems via IT solutions. This gave them a customer portfolio which could afterwards be geared towards the goal of creating a trade exchange. Were there problems with the strategic process?In case of collaborative computing, the process was flawed since Lowry did not put remarkable time and energy in determining whether any supporters of his concept exist outside Goldman, will he find partners ready to invest into his proposed system. He assumed that he will find partners promptly based only on cursory investigation before dedicating significant resources to the project. The correct process would have been to prepare partners before a unchewable investment into the project to avoid failing to find any partner after two years.In c ase of B2B exchanges, the process had the problem that the steps were reversed. The experts wanted to have an entire industry on board to urinate the exchange. The first correct step, as they later realized, was to solve the problems of individual customers that may later yield a portfolio to be used to create an exchange. The scenario leads to the decisiveness that in both cases, the concepts and ideas were wonderful but strategies were grossly inappropriate. The cases reinforce the importance of the relationship between CSP and ISP at every level.