Does IT play a role in organizational excellence?

Has new technology provided solutions to age-old problems in your organization?

A lot has been written and said about the role of IT in the lifecycle of companies. In this article we would specifically want to explore a few major challenges faced by organizations which have tried to deploy IT only to fail dismally.

The Strategic Business Challenge

You have probably heard or seen organizations spending millions of dollars on a new hardware and software only to find that most of the technology goes unused.

Merely buying a given technology without exploiting the new opportunities it offers to improving operations and how it aligns to the organizational strategic and operational plans does not cut it and therefore would not accomplish much.

Just like any other resource available to an organization, information must be carefully managed. Companies must therefore be careful to ensure that technology is fully integrated into the company at all levels.

The Information Architecture Challenge

You probably have also heard some companies putting a lot of faith in technology to transform an already ailing company. We need to realize that IT is only a tool that complements already existing strategic and operational plans and processes.

A company has to decide what business they are in, their core competencies, their objectives and goals. It is precisely these decisions that drive technology and not technology driving the company.

Information Architecture basically describes how to incorporate technology into the mainstream processes the business is involved in.

The responsibility and Control challenge

Too many people either give too much credit or blame IT for either success of failure. In basic computer studies we are often taught that computers work on the basis of garbage in garbage out, and so we must always have that in mind as we deal with IT in general.

Humans do control technology and as a manager, you should never lose sight of that.