Making the Business Case

1
Making the Business Case

• Achieving Strategic Alignment

2
Why

• Establish team credibility
• Sell the project
• New project
• Pilot project
• Support design trade-off decisions
• Define evaluation metrics

3
What is the business case?

• Alignment How does the project fit into
  organization goals?
• Impact Where does the project impact
  organization processes?
• Contribution What contribution does the project
  make?
• Metrics How will we define success?

4
Strategic ViewWho is the organization?

• Vision
• Mission
• Objective
• Tactic

5
Tactical Alignment
Business Objective
Business Tactic
IT Objective
IT Tactic
6
Firm Infrastructure(general management,
accounting, finance, strategic planning)
Support Activities
Human Resource Management (recruiting, training,
development)
Technology Development (RDlt product and process
improvement)
Procurement (purchasing of raw materials,
machines, supplies)
Inbound Logistics (raw materials handling and ware
hous- ing)
Outbound Logistics (warehous- ing
and distribution of finished product)
Marketing and Sales (advertising, promotion, prici
ng, channel relations)
Service (installation, repair, parts)
Operations (machine assembling, testing)
Primary Activities
7
Value Chain Model

• Chain of basic activities that add to firms
  products or services
• Products can be services or goals (particularly
  for public organizations)
• Each product has its own value chain
• Primary activities
• Secondary activities

8
Value Chain Primary Activities

• Inbound
• Outbound
• Operations
• Marketing and Sales
• After-Sale Services

9
Value Chain Support Activities

• Technology development
• Procurement
• Human Resources Management
• Management Control
• accounting/finance
• coordination
• general management
• central planning

10
Generic System Contributions

• Automate
• Informate
• Up
• Down
• Transform
• Discover
• Scott Morton (1991) and S. Zuboff, In the Age
  of the Smart Machine (New York Basic Books,
  1988).

11
Automation Information Systems

• Replace human effort with machine effort
• Reduce the number of workers
• Expand the amount of work that can be done by the
  current work force
• Expandable and non-expandable tasks
• Move the automation boundary
• Improved accuracy
• Customer empowerment
• Improve organization response time
• Increase focus on core competencies

12
Informating Information Systems

• Provide information to upper management
• Reduce the layers of management
• Improve the span of control
• Improve decision making ability
• Provide information to operational personnel
• Empower workforce

13
Transformational Information Systems

• Radical changes in an organizations business
  processes (Business Process Reengineering)
• Radical changes in an organizations structure
• Radical changes in an industrys value streams

14
Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

• Completely changes manner in which business is
  done
• Fewer steps, shorter cycle times
• Complete, more expert handling of events
• Not incremental improvement
• Typically uses IT as an enabler
• Involves discontinuous thinking

15
Characteristics of BPR

• Combining jobs
• Empowering employees
• Jobs done simultaneously
• Customizing product/service
• Work performed where most logical
• Single point of customer contact

16
Transformational Information Systems

• Radical changes in an organizations structure
• reduce layers of management
• empower front-line workers
• loosely couple work units
• Radical changes in an industrys value streams
• disintermediation
• create new markets