Delivering Business Value with It at Hefty Hardware

Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware

BY

RAFIQUE AHMED MOHAMMAD

Professor

Dr.Richard Tabu

University of Cumberlands

ITS -630-50 Organ Leader & Decision Making

Abstract

Hefty Hardware is implementing a new Savvy Store strategy, the primary goal of this project is to ensure the products are available to the customers whenever they want and all the employees in the store should be aware of the most updated information in terms of the products and be ready to serve their customers.

Glen visited the most advanced retail stores in Europe and would like to implement a similar business strategy to their stores. He then thought of bringing along with him some of the IT folks to have a tour of the stores as this would help them better understand the real world.

IT folks are deeply buried in their current schedule and are not willing to join the tour. CIO would like the IT Account manager and an Intern to accompany Glen to their tour to better understand the business and communicate it later to the IT folks to implement their new strategy.

Meanwhile, Paul has a marketing strategy in mind, which was questioned by the IT folks in terms of its technical implementation. Jenny is willing to talk to IT folks on building collaboration, trust between IT and Business partners.

This case study is to identify the problems between two departments and create a plan to implement the Hefty Hardware store program successfully  

Overall, how effective is the partnership between IT and the business at Hefty Hardware? Identify the shortcomings of both IT and the business.

Based on the communication specified in the case study, we can see there is a lack of partnership between IT and business. Cheryl and IT folks have a knowledge gap in terms of business and the technical domains; IT folks are concerned about their technology constraints while business is worried about the project implementation.

IT division lacks the necessary knowledge of understanding the business functions, thus hindering the implementation of the business strategy.

Glen visited the cutting edge retail stores in Europe, where IT played a significant role in implementing features like self-service, access to information on a range of products within the store, better customer service and provide devices to the customers for the product knowledge.  Glen strategy is to integrate the multimedia and the digital information to the Hefty’s stores.

Glen idea was to bring the Business as well as IT partners to the trip so that the IT folks could see the real world, but due to lack of trust and relationship between the two departments, eventually, Farzad backed off.

Paul mentioned his marketing strategy in the technology meeting to implement a Japanse bar code system for cell phone promotions. R & D teams were not able to explain how the technology would benefit marketing, eventually leading to the failure of an idea, we can deduce that lack of interpersonal interactions between the R& D team and marketing team led to no funding for the mobile connectivity infrastructure.

Further, as Jenny mentioned, CIO’s seem to turn over every two years shows the lack of trust in the company and the departments. Past experiences such as system failures, application crash, or cost of the IT indicates the lack of collaboration within various IT teams.

Also, the recent CIM project cost overruns explain that the business team needs are continually changing and lead to confusion with the IT teams, a strategic business vision is necessary for the success of the business and IT strategy.

Based on the conservations between the participants, here are below problems deduced.

• There is communication, as well as the knowledge gap between the two departments.
• Lack of IT & business strategy for delivering business value, clearly there is no collaboration between IT and business during the life cycle of the project.
• Lack of business and IT knowledge between the two departments is the biggest concern for project implementations.
• IT folks lack the understanding of the business model, thus creating a delay in implementing the business strategy.
• The right people are not involved in business strategy sessions.
• Work breakdown structure for the IT teams is not defined, thus leading to delay in the technology implementation.        
• Lack of trust and relationship between the two divisions, thus delaying the implementation, failures, and cost overrun.
• Business partners lack strategic business vision.
• IT department are understaffed and underfuned.

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

First and foremost, IT and Business teams need to build a strong working relationship and trust; the organization can invest in team building programs which bring the teams together. Both the teams need to spend quality time understanding the business goals and needs. Knowledge transfer sessions assist the IT folks in understanding business processes and business model. Hefty Hardware should hire a Project Manager to develop a  work breakdown structure for the IT teams to breakdown the work, timelines, and utilization effectively; with WBS the project manager can track the delivery timelines, thus reducing the risk of failures, cost overruns, delay in implementations( Pohlman, R., & Gardiner, G).