Competitive Advantage To Corporate Strategy -Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Competitive Advantage To Corporate Strategy? Answer: Introduction Business and information technology alignment is the correspondence between the organization objectives and the enterprise requirement of information technology(Rouse, 2016).Although these two factors mostly seem as contradicting, many of the technical expert and economic expert do agree that the alignment between the two, if maintained well over time, are crucial for any success of an enterprise. Business and IT alignment comprise of the optimization of communication between the executives who are known for making the business decisions, and the IT experts who are known to oversee the technical operations of the business. The critical factors for business IT alignment comprises of the flexible organization plan implementation and the architecture of IT implementation and the allocation that are cost-effective(Rouse, 2016).Managers in the IT departments can formulate and submit a proposal that can be tailored in order to ensure the optimum return on investment. Business executives usually attend the meetings held in the IT departments and seminars so as to improve their technical capabilities understanding and enterprise limitation. DBS Bank is one of the largest banks in Asia. The bank has reacted to the corresponding opportunities and threats that are posted by technology, through taking up of the business digital techniques which the bank has greatly invested in the innovation and embraced radical changes to their business re-engineering. The digital transformation that the bank has been to patch up its innovation and operations entity. The digital platform improvement in the bank has greatly posed a technology influence on the internal incubation redesign. The bank process for rewiring the business process has highlighted the major abilities that an organization requires so that it can seek digital strategy in business. Building of scalable technology The DBS bank first priority in the integration of business with IT was building a technology platform that is scalable. It was evident that the business operations were different in various countries. There was lack of a technology that was consistent across the countries under business operations. The DBS banks aim was to create a platform that was very flexible. This required a lot of work to be done on the back-end infrastructure. The organization has launched a management banking platform that facilitates seamless, customer experience. This platform allows the retail consumer who has grown assets to access the wealth management functionalities so as to manage their growing wealth in addition to accessing the retail banking. This technology has been advantageous to the DBS bank as it has allowed the bank to stay responsive to the demands of the business through the development of its strong competency in the integration of technology, which is a critical competency for the sound business solution devising. Importance on aligning business with IT The DBS bank has benefited a lot from the alignment of IT and Business. The bank has experienced a great superior performance in its business process. Some of these advantages comprises of, First the organization has achieved a competitive advantage. In banking industry the competition is very stiff, this is because the industry has grown from the exercise of saving money, in Asia any business that contends with money-saving capabilities are facing stiff competition. DBS bank has three territories that have placed its primary focus on, consumer banking, management of wealth and institutional banking, which are outside the banking industry which surely ensures various financial institution competition. Secondly, it is great importance for banks to ensure that they have set their business strategy aligned with information technology so as to achieve the organization strategy(Manwani, 2008).The DBS used this approach in order for it to stay relevant and strengthen its presence in Asia m arket. The only way the organization could achieve this was through placing technology at the core of their business. This required the radical rewiring of the entire organization for the new digital era. The company stated that the need to move to the information and mobile, is that the organization saw the need to rethink their strategies in business and the change that the business model will have. DBS bank aligning business with IT was not just about mobile apps development but about the organization rethinking. The alignment of the Business with It will improve the effectiveness and cause an increase in the business performance (Xiaoying, Qianqian, and Dezhi, 2008). Failure to align business with IT in some business are due to various reasons. To begin with, there might lack interaction and understanding between the chief executive officer and the chief information officer (Johnson and Lederer, 2010).Another reason is that the organization can change the strategy which causes the misalignment between the IT and business strategy (Tarafdar and Qrunfleh, 2010).Lastly the alignment, due to lack of clarity between the planning phase and the phase for execution can cause a conflict between the two phases (Tarafdar and Qrunfleh, 2010). Conclusion Its evident that an implementation of an enterprise resource planning systems and aligning it with business, the system main role is to standardize, streamline and integrate business process. It is however argued that the organization operating globally do face a lot of challenges in the implementation of such systems, in alignment with the organization business strategies. The reason for the failure of the enterprise resource planning system is the misalignment the organizational strategies. As in the case of the DBS, it's clear that the alignment of business with IT has established a necessary critical partner for the business enabler (King, 2016). The effective collaborative relationship has been the key to driving the digital initiatives and attaining the organization desired outcomes, hence integrating it with various units of business in the organization so as to fulfill the strategic objectives. The investment in technology by the DBS bank has helped the business grow, this is seen in the business strong ownership of its technology roadmap, having respective business heads .the role of IT has been fused with the bank business strategy. Reference Fan, D. X. L. F. Y., Dezhi, L. Q. Y. (2008). CIOs' Roles in Chinese Organizations: An Application of Q-Methodology [J]. China Journal of Information Systems, 2. Johnson, A. M., Lederer, A. L. (2010). CEO/CIO mutual understanding, strategic alignment, and the contribution of IS to the organization. Information Management, 47(3), 138-149. King, J. (2016). The importance of IT and Business Alignment. Bigair.com.au. Retrieved 16 January 2018, from https://www.bigair.com.au/blog/the-importance-of-aligning-it-with-business-functions Manwani, S. (2008). IT-enabled business change: Successful management. British Informatics Society Limited. Porter, M. E. (2010). From competitive advantage to corporate strategy. In Readings in strategic management (pp. 234-255). Palgrave, London Rouse, M. (2016). What is business-IT alignment? - Definition from WhatIs.com. WhatIs.com. Retrieved 16 January 2018, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/business-IT-alignment Tarafdar, M., Qrunfleh, S. (2010). Examining Tactical Information TechnologyBusiness Alignment. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 50(4), 107-116.