It Investment at North American Financial

IT Investment at North American Financial

Key Issues

• At NAF, delivering value with IT is about more than delivering projects on time and on budget or having a good IT development shop. They have all this but there’s still not enough value getting delivered. This case explores the questions of who is responsible for delivering value with IT and when IT value is delivered. It emphasizes that value delivery should be a business-IT partnership responsibility and will require change in the business over time.

• The first part of this case looks at the relationship between business strategy and IT development projects. It makes it clear that enterprise business strategies need enterprise solutions and a procedure for matching these. It also introduces the concept that investing in IT infrastructure and keeping it current is an important component of being able to deliver value.

• This case speaks directly to the disconnect between IT budgeting practices and financial and business strategy implementation.

• The case describes how lack of clearly defined expectations, effective governance, and accountabilities can undermine the business-IT relationship and lead to a lack of trust.

• The case illustrates the need to reduce the proportion of the IT budget spent on maintenance matters and the need for reduction of the complexity of the applications portfolio in order to free up resources to use on discretionary, strategic IT projects.

Discussion Questions

CATHY BENSON, THE DIRECTOR OF THE NEWLY CREATED IT INVESTMENT OFFICE, IS TASKED WITH THE “DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A DETAILED INVESTMENT OPTIMIZATION PROCESS TO BE IMPLEMENTED THROUGHOUT THE BANK IN TIME FOR THE NEXT BUDGET CYCLE.” SHE HAS THREE MONTHS TO DO THIS AND IT MUST BE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FIVE ESTABLISHED PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE THE BANK’S IT INVESTMENT PROCESS. YOUR TASK IS TO DESIGN AND IMPLEMENT:

1.