It Investment at North American Financials

IT Investment at North American Financials

Synopsis

This case discusses about the issue at North America Finance where business does not see value in IT investments and the challenges IT was facing to keep up with the business strategies. The CIO, Caroline Weese suggest to form an IT Investment Committee that would look into project categorization and prioritization, comprehensive and holistic governance of IT spending and benefits delivery at all levels and an annual IT planning process that provides transparency and accountability for all types of IT spending and which creates an integrated and strategically aligned development portfolio.

Key Issues

1. Communication gap between the business and IT hence business fail to understand the value IT is bringing

2. IT’s lack of transparency to the business regarding the IT investments.

3. No enterprise IT budgeting process that looks across all the business units and implement what’s good for the whole enterprise.

4. There was inconsistent alignment of the total IT development budget with enterprise strategies.

5. Project approvals were made by business units without addressing cross-unit synergies.

6. Business case format were inconsistent and the data provided to justify the cost lacked rigor.

7. Once project was approved focus was on on-time, on-budget delivery. They failed to see if the project was still in line with the anticipated benefits.

8. Once project was delivered, there was no accountability to measure the benefits delivered

9. Enterprise executives created enterprise strategies, but they didn’t get involved in implementing them in the business units.

10. Business units not interested in IT housekeeping to reduce duplications and simplify application portfolio.

11. Business unit heads where prioritizing initiatives within their own silo.

12. It was always struggling to keep up and find the resources to be flexible.

13. Project size was based on the...