Assignment
One of the most powerful resources available to organizations is information technology (IT). While most executives recognize their responsibility to ensure that all of the organization's business processes provide optimal value to the organization, they may find it difficult to ensure that the IT infrastructure is aligned with the organization's strategic goals. Without this alignment, IT resources may not be used effectively and may not fully contribute to the organization's business goals. To ensure that an organization's IT strategy is aligned to the business objectives, one has to understand the business objectives, the legacy systems, and new technologies.
In this project, you will complete an audit of the technology and information systems processes in your organization. Focus on hardware, software, networks, databases, security, and people. You will decide the extent to which business functions are being facilitated by the present information technology infrastructure. In particular, you will assess how well the current IT infrastructure can accommodate your organization's business strategy.
Conduct this IT audit for your own organization if you can. Depending on the size of your organization and your access to information, auditing your entire organization may be impractical. As an alternative to using your own organization, you can choose a nonprofit organization, an educational institution, a previous employer, or another organization with which you are familiar. Consult your instructor for approval of your choice.
This project will use templates in Microsoft Excel to walk you through steps to evaluate your information systems strategy, to assess gaps in your current system implementation and security, and to recommend emerging technologies to assist your organization in its business objectives.
Step 1
The first step in performing an IT audit that is tied to business strategy is understanding the short-term and long-term goals and objectives of the business. While we expect IT strategies to be aligned to an organization's business strategies, in practice, this is not easy to achieve. The organization typically has made large investments in legacy systems that have been supporting the current business. The organization must balance the maintenance of current business requirements with the need to support longer term strategies, using emerging technologies to improve the competitiveness of the organization.
Completing this business audit will ensure that you learn a lot about the business of the organization.
To prepare for the audit, read Audits, Internal and Core Competencies. The templates provided for Step 1 will give you a framework for collecting this information. Be sure to ask the following questions:
• What are the strategic goals of the organization?
• What are the business operational goals?
• How do you see your organization in one year, in five years, and beyond?
Download and open the Templates_for_Project2_with_Instructions.xlsx file. You will be using this file throughout this project. For optional feedback in Steps 1 and 3, use the following naming protocols:
• Step 1 -> Lastname_first name_Project 2_Appx_A1_A2_B_C
• Steps 2 and 3 -> Lastname_first name_Project 2_Appx_A1_A2_B_C_D_E_F
For the final submission in this project, please use the following naming protocol:
• Step 5 -> Lastname_first name_Project 2_Appx_A1_A2_B_C_D_E_F_G_H_I
The templates for business objectives in Appendices A1 and A2 will guide your discovery. You should list a minimum of three business objectives that exist for your organization, which will likely vary from these templates. Existing entries in templates A1 and A2 are for illustration purposes only. You should fill in and submit to the assignment folder two tables: Appendix A1 is for short-term goals (one year) and Appendix A2 is for longer term goals (five or more years). See Goal Setting for more information.
After you understand your organization's business objectives, you will need to evaluate how well your organization is meeting those objectives. The template in Appendix B will guide you through a quick analysis of overall organizational effectiveness. You may want to ask those in leadership positions how well the organization is performing, but you can also get this information by examining how well the organization is performing according to current operational objectives. Choose a minimum of three organizational effectiveness criteria. Provide a one-sentence description of each measure, along with an overall score on a five-point scale and an explanation of the score you provided. See Effectiveness and Efficiency.
Now that you've looked at how well the overall organization is performing, you should evaluate the organization at a lower level. Using the Appendix C template to guide you, assess the general well-being of any two departments in your organization (for example, finance and marketing). Again, provide explanation for any key issues for areas where there are less effective or very effective departments. This information may help you to see areas where opportunities exist to improve your business with technology.
To summarize what you have found during your assessment of the business, prepare a two-page summary of the business objectives and the level of effectiveness in your organization. This business objectives and effectiveness summary should address the following questions:
• What are some short-term and long-term business objectives of your organization?
• What is your evaluation of overall organizational effectiveness? Departmental level effectiveness?
Post your business assessment worksheets (Appendices A1, A2, B, and C) along with your two-page summary of business objectives and effectiveness to your assignment folder. Your instructor will review your work and inform you of any major weaknesses in your deliverable.
In the next step, you will evaluate the ability of IT to meet the business objectives identified in Step 1.
Step 2
In Step 1, you looked at the state of business. Now in Step 2, you will evaluate the ability of IT to meet business objectives. You should review Technology in Businessand Technology Resources before moving on to Appendix D and E.
Conduct an inventory of the technology being used in your organization. The technology inventory, Appendix D, provides a structured format for identifying various technologies and their business functions. In this step, you are merely identifying the various types of technology that exist in your organization and their purpose in the organization as they relate to business functions.
Next, you will evaluate the technology for its ability to meet current and future business needs. Does your organization use software for customer relationship management (CRM)? For inventory management? For employee training? What have you learned from this assessment? Review Capabilities of IT Systems and Measuring IT Effectiveness before you continue.
Many of the technologies found in organizations are implemented to meet the needs of specific business functions. Often, they are not evaluated for their impact on the organization's overall strategic business objectives. Use the information technology assessment worksheet, Appendix E, to document the overall state of technology in your organization. Some of the cells in the worksheet are filled in as examples. Please delete the examples before starting your work so that you begin with a blank template. Assess two or three of the most critical business functions as you identify and list the capabilities and problems or gaps that exist, being precise in your description of how each business information system contributes to the overall efficiency or performance of the business function. You will use the following five questions to guide your assessment:
• What technologies are responsible for the operation and success of the organization?
• What is the organizational structure and where does IT reside in this structure?
• Are there obvious areas where existing technology is not meeting the current business needs of your organization?
• Are there inefficiencies or redundant systems?
• Are there potential vulnerabilities in the existing systems that could impact operations in the short term? What about in the long term?
See Identifying Applications of Current and Potential Technologies before continuing.
Next, write a detailed assessment of the ability of technology to support key business functions in the organization. Your two-to-three-page technology assessment write-up will consist of one or two paragraphs to address each of the five questions above at the end of Week 2. Post this along with your technology assessment worksheets (Appendices D and E) to your assignment folder. Your instructor will review your work and inform you of any major weaknesses in your deliverable.
In the next step, you will complete a business process risk assessment for your organization.
Step 3
In Step 2, you looked at your organization's business processes and the technology that supports them. Some opportunities for improvement should now be apparent. Every organization has limited resources to invest, and so it is important to prioritize the problem areas that you identified. One way to prioritize issues is by their potential impact to key organizational business processes. You will do this by conducting a risk assessment. A risk assessment can be used as a tool for identifying and quantifying the factors that have the potential to impact critical business goals. See Business Process Risk Assessment.
A risk assessment exercise typically requires several steps: identification of the business risks, assessment of the likelihood and impact of the risk, and the identification of mitigation strategies to control the risks. See Business Risk Mitigation to get more details.
Use the risk assessment worksheet, Appendix F, to list and rate the business risks as to the relative consequences and the likelihood of not meeting business objectives. If there is an existing work-around or mitigation strategy that reduces the seriousness of the risk, please make a note. A mitigation strategy may involve a process work-around, realignment of resources or an investment in IT infrastructure. You might also want to review the risk matrix in Appendix G, for additional information on performing your risk assessment.
You will now use the risk assessment and level of risk you determined through your risk analysis to prioritize the organization's business risks. The risks that pose realistic and severe threats to the business will typically have the highest priority. However, mitigation efforts should be considered as you make your list of priorities. The organization may not view a risk as a high priority if they have an acceptable mitigation strategy in place. Post the risk assessment (Appendix F) in your assignment folder by the end of Week 2.
In the next step, you will familiarize yourself with emerging technologies in preparation for making recommendations to the CEO.
Step 4
Now that you have assessed your organization's current technology inventory and assessed your organization's risk factors, you are ready to review emerging technologies that may benefit your organization.
In almost every aspect of business, technologies have been transforming the way that we do business, improving the productivity and efficiency of organizations across all sectors. Point-of-sale systems are now used by most major retailers and computers are used to manage sales, inventory, employees, and communication. Technology is evolving and new technologies are being introduced all that time that have the potential to improve the competitiveness of organizations. The following are some of the emerging technologies that you should become familiar with before you make your report to the CEO:
• mobile devices
• social media
• cloud computing
• data analytics (big data)
• digital tools (3D printing, wearables, internet of things, etc.)
• virtual and augmented reality
• machine learning and artificial intelligence
You are not limited to the emerging technologies in this list; be sure to consider other technologies you have learned about in your research or from other sources. When you have completed your review of emerging technologies, you are ready continue to the next step, in which you will evaluate these technologies and determine if they might be useful for your organization.
Step 5
Every organization is unique when it comes to assessing how beneficial the implementation of one technology is over another. Many technologies have failed to live up to the potential benefits that were expected from their implementation, so you will want to look at several factors as you proceed through your analysis. Below are some specific questions to consider when identifying emerging technologies that have the potential to impact critical business functions in your organization.
• Can it lower the cost of maintaining your legacy systems?
• Will it enable your organization to improve business processes?
• Will it improve interoperability of systems?
• Will it simplify or standardize IT interfaces?
• Does it define new computing or communication standards?
• Can this technology be used to reengineer a mission critical business process?
• Will employees see it as a solution to their problem?
• Is the organization prepared to deliver any required training on the new system?
Be sure to read Technology Solution Implementation before you continue with this step.
Indicate which two emerging technologies you would recommend that your organization implement. As you evaluate the new technologies, you will choose two that you believe have great opportunity to add value to your organization and organizational business processes. Replacing or integrating critical legacy information systems can be costly to the organization and may put the organization at risk, therefore you should evaluate these suggestions carefully. Fill out the emerging technology templates (Appendix H and I). These templates will help you capture the pertinent factors regarding implementation of new technologies in your organization. For assistance for estimating costs of new technology see Cost Estimating.
When you have finished evaluating emerging technologies, continue to the next step, in which you will present your complete technology audit report.
Step 6
Now that you have a full understanding of the gaps and opportunities presented by current and future technologies, prepare an executive-level brief (or technology audit report) of no more than 2800 - 3000 words, which communicates the current state of information technology in your organization. Discuss whether or not existing technologies help your organization meet business objectives as well as the impact that these technologies may have on your organization's business model. Ultimately, if accepted, your recommendations would be documented in a technology plan or technology roadmap. See Technology Roadmap for help on this step.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also Include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.