From Business Strategy to IT Action: Right Decisions for a Better Bottom Line - Hardcover

Benson, Robert J.; Bugnitz, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471491918 ISBN 13: 9780471491910

Publisher: Wiley, 2004

Synopsis

From Business Strategy to IT Action gives companies of all sizes the tools to effectively link IT to business strategy and produce effective, actionable strategies for bottom-line results. The authors present CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and IT managers with a powerful and accessible resource packed with such useful material as:
* The Strategy-to-Bottom-Line Value Chain, which integrates the management practices relating to planning, prioritization, alignment, and assessing a company's entire IT budget
* Methods for using IT Impact Management to establish IT culture and performance models for the business/IT connection
* The IT Improvement Zone, which quickly identifies where a company can focus its energies for maximum results
* And much more

About this title

From the Inside Flap

From Business Strategy to IT Action presents a practical and proven management approach based on a very simple idea: a company should only spend money on IT that directly supports its business strategies and operational effectiveness, and should not spend money on IT that doesn't. Management can control IT budgets and investments, and at the same time improve IT's bottom-line impact, by consistently developing and selecting the best IT investments and eliminating existing but underperforming IT activities. This book illustrates how to do this.

From Business Strategy to IT Action shows how CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs can improve their IT investments, control IT budgets, and get the biggest bang for their IT buck. From a coordinated business/IT strategic planning process to business/IT performance measurement, the authors present a suite of tools for understanding, managing, and controlling the entire IT budget, aimed at producing the right IT actions for the organization.

The central theme of this book is the Strategy-to-Bottom-Line Value Chain, a framework that integrates five practices a company can use to get the right bottom-line results from IT activities: Strategic IT Demand/Supply Planning, Innovation, Prioritization, Alignment, and Performance Measurement. The authors present robust Portfolio Management and Culture Management support practices, all focused on making IT produce measurable bottom-line results. All of these are tied together with the Business Value Maturity Model(TM), a tool for assessing the readiness of an organization to use IT most effectively in its business.

Extending the groundbreaking concepts introduced in Information Economics that promote management's direct involvement in decision-making for IT investment, this book shows how management can actively participate in all activities in the Value Chain. By wrapping a complete planning and management framework around the original concepts of Information Economics, the authors establish a new way for business and IT managers to make the right decisions and get the right results from IT.

About the Author

Robert J. Benson is a principal with The Beta Group, a consulting firm with clients in the United States and throughout the world. He is affiliate professor of computer science at Washington University and part-time professor of information management at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He is coauthor of Information Economics: Linking Information Technology and Business Performance and Information Strategy and Economics.

Thomas L. Bugnitz is President of The Beta Group. He is a frequent speaker on technology management and an adjunct professor at Washington University.

William B. Walton is a principal with The Beta Group. Prior to joining The Beta Group, he spent seventeen years with Gartner Group, where he developed IT measurement services and associated analytical methods.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0471491918
• ISBN 13: 9780471491910
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352