Delivering Business Value with It at Hefty Hardware

Case Study: Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware

From my understanding of the scenario portrayed by the excerpt, the relationship between IT and business at Hefty Hardware are at its weakest point. Both departments do not appear to co-exist in the organization. Instead, they exist as two separate and distinct entities. IT and business goals are not strategically aligned despite the high expectations towards IT to influence more on business. Analyzing the situation, there seems to be a lack of active involvement of IT department in the strategy development of the Savvy Store program.

There are at least two major issues in hand that business and IT department at Hefty Hardware need to resolve. Firstly, the staff in the IT department seems to have a lack of knowledge on how the organization operates in business standpoint. As far as the other IT project portfolio goes, the basis of the IT strategy in the organization only revolves around creating an efficient and reliable IT infrastructure to provide a conducive platform for business operations. The general consensus in the organization is that the IT does not contribute directly to the business goals and only act as support for the business architecture. Constant change of leadership and possibly the nature and culture of the department’s environment could be the root of the cause of the issue that resulted in the stagnant IT strategy. Secondly and equally as important is the ineffective communication between the IT and business department in the organization. This issue is portrayed by the lack of shared knowledge and mutual understandings between both departments regarding the technicalities of IT and business. It is very clear that the IT department does not speak the “business language” and the business department does not understand the IT “technical jargons”. Business managers also do not understand how IT infrastructure will directly affect the operation of Savvy Store to improve the...