Organization Leadership & Decision Making

1) The relation between the business and IT department in the context of the organization has been characterized as highly divisive. Contributing problems appear to revolve around the failure to adequately communicate and understand the required information for the alignment of business and IT strategies and infrastructures. In Simple terms, Business-IT Relationship is working with Business Leaders to ensure IT is partnering with them in delivering their goals. This can be achieved when IT leaders and business heads have empathy for each other’s work, both of them solving technology and business decisions together. In some organizations there is a role created with title of Business IT relationship manager wherein the incumbent is supposed to manage demand of IT projects from business while at same time reporting value delivered by IT to business stakeholders.

There are many components or building block for establishing a strong business-IT relationship and they are:

· Competence.

· Credibility.

· Interpersonal Interaction.

· Trust.

· Value.

The role of IT is changing rapidly. Digitalization sets a new business scene where all future business models will rely on smart use of IT. Digitalization acclaims the IT to support business in value creation and revenue growth with faster time-to-market development of solutions. The new digital business environment requires a business oriented IT that shares the challenges, opportunities and market pace with the business.

Representing business in IT

· IT management Team member with a business focus.

· Responsible for coordinating business-specific development initiatives with a roadmap.

· Representing business in governance bodies if there is no other business representative.

Representing IT for business

· Having an end-to-end responsibility for IT within a business.

· IT representative in business management whenever decision topics relate to IT.

· Execution of group IT strategy, initiatives and objectives within a business.

References

Business Relationship Management (April 2012) Retrieved from  https://www.itforbusiness.org/book/enterprise-development/business-relationship-management/

2) IT and Business relationship is very important for successful running of an organization with cost efficient and constant reliable process. IT and business relation should not be from one unique directional it should be bi-directional both need to be engaged for successful completion of the task. Some of the managers thought it is not easy to establish positive relationship between IT and Business because both have different faces in looking through the process and interacting with the people. So many organizations feel difficult to establish this relationship among IT and business departments. They feel it as complex task because lack of trust among each other. My think IT as evil because of its complex and process, huge investment, for this IT need to understand business fundamentals and business models. They need to come up with a technical plan for their current business models for effective outcome of business. They need to involve in understand the business expectations and convince the business managers about their concerns and goal in way business managers can understand. A strong relationship among both IT department and Business managers lead to reliable business strategies of an organization. This relationship depends on following key characteristics they are IT need to change according the expectations of the business, IT need to work along with the business both need to be engaged and last on is IT need to prove themselves. Along with this relationship can be effective if people have strong interaction about business process at different levels. Proper clarity needs to be maintained for obtained the accountability and to reach expectations. All need group need to be interconnected somehow though the process and trust. For any relationship to get strong their need to be a strong foundation values for building this relationship it takes time. Here I am going this discuss one of this key foundation for IT and business relationship that is Competence.

                  Now days business managers expects more from the IT services and their functions. The capacity of the organization to deliver reliable and cost-efficient services cannot be possible without strong IT services. Even IT also adapting the internal business models for successful and effective operation of IT. But expect managers identified the short in competence this can be overcome by identifying strange competence from the IT functions. IT professionals need to get knowledge about the business models and need to understand their technology is deployed in archiving the business goals and objectives,  success factors of the organization. One of the competences of IT is to work in cross domain and functional understanding the business models. Other competence where IT needs to manage are Expertise, awareness on the business and financial values of the organization and Execution. Expertise include IT need to develop skills to handle the situations in business and advise on the options and risks through new ideas. It is important for all IT department to understand the financial values of the company by understanding the concepts of revenue of interest and ownership. IT and business relationship creation are not the final goal. Executing them by delivering the product in time .

            Some other factors that help for competence are all IT department need to have knowledge on the business, Linking the IT technology strategies into the business models. IT need to explain their strategies  and ideas in the business point of view.

3) As the dynamics of IT industries are changing rapidly, leadership is going to play more important role in any organization’s growth. The one important quality of IT leadership is to foresee the uncertainties in the organization and plan the project implementation accordingly. Leader of the team in IT departments should come forward and be accountable to the team’s daily operations like handling the projects, working with the business in requirements gathering, delivering the product to the customers.

The value proposition of investing in IT leadership is significant in terms of the good results during the output of the projects delivered. The results will prevailing for both short term as well as long term. If any training process is proper and effective, there will be a clear behavioral change in the employees in the team. Any project needs some guidance and a mentor to handle things during the development stage and investing wisely in the IT leadership will help the cause by giving the best leaders for the team within the organization. This will be of immense help for the company in the future. Burgoyne, J. (2004)

They should also be considerate towards the employees when they have initially started taking up things/handling projects of the team. The Good leader always should focus on the process and not on the result as proper process will always drive the team towards good results.

Other qualities of an IT leader include being available/reachable to his or her team all the time as the IT industry itself comes with a tag of employees working in various shifts. A good leader should not just collects the data but also should be good at analysis of the data to focus on what is needed. Most importantly, a good leader should have the positive intent towards the team and maintain a healthy atmosphere.

A good leader in IT industry should enable and empower his or her team to learn more. As the technology changes are at a rapid pace, constant learning makes the employees grow up in their career. The IT Leadership should always connect with the employees, provides timely suggestions and facilitate enough opportunities in their career progression. In IT Industry, contribution of every single individual sums up to make the final result so driving the employees towards excellence will always yield great results to the team on the whole.

 

References:

Burgoyne, J. (2004) How certain are we that management and leadership development is effective? Presentation at the Centre for Excellence in Leadership First Annual Conference, the Belfry, 30-31 March.

4) Investment in IT leadership development

A great IT leadership is essential in every business and the main definition of leadership is the activity of leading a group of people in the organization, it involves the establishment of clear vision’s and sharing the vision with the team member’s so that they would be able to understand the process then they will use their knowledge and methods to go to that vision. An effective leader has to be strict in any manner, all leadership qualities have to be included in such a leader. In technology leadership, the leader has to follow all the information technology advances, business, and technology strategies (Akhtar, 2016).

Investing in IT leadership development improves the bottom line means a company investing in IT leadership has more returns as compared to normal returns. Leadership development increases employee engagement and reduces the costs which are associated with the turnover. It also improves corporate culture, the value proposition in investing in IT leadership development is the most vital aspect of an organization. it improves innovation, and teamwork too along with future and present leadership qualities. We can value a proposition by examining its relevance that we have to explain how we solve customer’s problems. and have to make a differentiation (Desha, 2017).

A good IT leadership have many qualities in which some of the qualities are

· Honesty: honesty is the main quality that a leader should derive, he should be honest with the members.

· Communication: a good communication system has to be maintained by the leader with the team members and as well as with the outsiders.

· Confidence: he has to be with confidence that he can undergo any constraints.

· Positive attitude: the leader has to be a positive attitude.

· Inspire: the leader should inspire other’s despite he has to be an inspiration to others (Marongwe, 2019).

References

Akhtar, M., Casha, J. N., Ronder, J., Sakel, M., Wight, C., & Manley, K. (2016). Leading the health service into the future: transforming the NHS through transforming ourselves. International Practice Development Journal, 6(2), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.19043/ipdj.62.005

Desha, C., Foresman, T., Vancheswaran, A., Reeve, A., & Hayes, J. (2017). Pivotal principles for digital earth development in the twenty-first century. International Journal of Digital Earth, 10(4), 371–385. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2016.1161090

Marongwe, P., Gonouya, P., Madoda, T., Murenje, V., Tshimanga, M., Balachandra, S., … Feldacker, C. (2019). Trust but verify: Is there a role for active surveillance in monitoring adverse events in Zimbabwe’s large-scale male circumcision program? PLoS ONE, 14(6), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218137

5) Shared services work generally as a backup and back end of the many verticals and centers of the organization, it collaborates all department like sales, marketing, strategies, documentation, etc. at one backend place called shared services which means all the different services to all department is being offered by the shared services.

There are different benefits of shared services. Despites those benefits, many companies are organization has been unable to embrace the strategy properly. The main reason of this is it is very difficult and there are a lot of risks for it to be implemented. It requires a deep understanding of the company needs, requirements and capabilities of the market to create an effective shared service. It is very difficult to every organization to develop the strategy without careful planning and right guidance which will lead to transition while minimizing and maximizing efficiency.

To have an effective shared service, an organization must have these things in their consideration:

· There should not be any communication gap in between the employees so that they do not hesitate with each other is asking anything or in sharing anything.

· There should be proper resources available so that there should not be any conflicts in between the team mates

· The staff should be trained in that way so that they can have access to the resources at regular interval of times

· There can be shifts as well where the time slots are set for the individuals for which they can access the resources without anyone's interference

References

Jackson. (2017, Jul 28). The Shared Services Roadmap: How to Drive Efficiency and Reduce Cost. Retrieved from https://www.thinkwgroup.com/the-shared-services-roadmap

6) Shared services are being applied to an increasing range of functions. Human resources, IT, and finance had been some of the first areas where shared offerings oftentimes were implemented. Now sales operations, grant chain operations, and marketing are taking advantage of shared-services platforms.

The guidelines for developing a fantastic shared service are

Create a road map. Get buy-in from senior management. Then create a policy for shared services that map out the degrees of the transition clearly. Otherwise, what takes place is, it’s completed in bits and pieces.

Invest in trade management. There is job uncertainty in some pockets of the organization, whilst at the identical time, shared-service corporation employees foreign places may be struggling to get up to speed (Lachance, 2012).

Don’t financial institution all your savings. It’s clever to document phase of the savings, but make investments some of the financial savings in science that will want to be more sophisticated as local operations become extra global.

Fix processes. Reducing the range of damaged methods that are going into shared offerings can retailer heartache later on. Some organizations have also efficiently moved work to shared services, saved costs, and used phase of the financial savings to restoration the process. Whatever the approach, restore the manner and automate.

Design the retained organization. It is fundamental to preserve body of workers who possess domain expertise, understanding of the enterprise or function, and connections to key decision-makers in the enterprise in the relevant nations and regions, and the corporate office. The retained organization, alongside with the shared service, need to enable higher enterprise outcomes.

Don’t expand the range of handoffs. As the wide variety of humans touching a transaction increases, so does its danger of failure. If the wide variety of handoffs rises with shared-services implementation, customer carrier will suffer.

Focus on danger management. It’s vital to ensure that a company’s shared-services implementation is not creating elevated risk exposure (McKeen, 2017).

Move quickly. After a decision has been made, a gradual transition to shared offerings can motive a loss of momentum.

Be present. As a typical rule, senior administration need to be visible, face-to-face, at least once a month at the shared-services place in the early days of the transition,. In-person appearances can be scaled back to quarterly once the transition is almost complete. A exact video-conferencing facility can help decrease the frequency of face-to-face meetings, however in-person interplay is important.

Be patient. It may also take a couple of years earlier than the full extent of the advantages is realized.

 

 

References

 

Lachance, K. and Hodgson, S. (2012). Shared service. Farnham: Gower.

 

McKeen, J. D., & Smith, H. (2017). It strategy: issues and practices. Burlington: Prospect Press.