Business value

• There is increasing pressure on business to be more flexible and to deliver products and services to customers quickly. IT practices often inhibit these business goals.
• IT is expected to deliver both cheap, reliable operations AND create new business value. These goals can get confused by both business and IT leaders and leadership can mix these up when evaluating IT or when doing IT planning and budgeting.
• IT is a key player in delivering most business strategies these days. Too often, IT leaders see “getting to know the business” as secondary to almost every other IT issue, such as planning and architecture. Spending time in the business is seen as a “boondoggle.”
• “Technospeak” is confusing and frustrating for business. This can work against IT plans and strategies because business leaders don’t understand how these plans/strategies relate to their own needs, issues, and strategies.
• Business expects IT communication to be in business language.

1. How effective is the partnership between IT and the business at Hefty Hardware? Identify the shortcomings of both IT and the business.
TBD

2. Create a plan for how IT and the business can work collaboratively to deliver the Savvy Store program successfully.
TBD

Synopsis

This case highlights a retail firm struggling to make sense of the increasing criticality of information technology (IT) to the business and the value IT is currently delivering. Torn between “keeping the lights on” and “delivering new products and services to customers”, successive CIOs have failed to connect effectively with their business partners despite seemingly effective relationships at the mid-management level. How to collaborate effectively with the business at all levels remains the key IT challenge.