WMBA 6030 Week 1 Systems and Strategy Post Example

Week 1 Discussion: Information Systems and Business Strategy

The Strategy Is Big Tents for Corporate Clients; the Website Still Sells Folding Chairs: Tracing Two Systems at an Event Rental Company to the Strategy It Is Actually Pursuing

I work in operations at Harwood Tent and Event, a composite event rental company of about 140 people with warehouses in Kansas City, Omaha and Des Moines. We rent tents, flooring, tables, chairs, linens and lighting. The strategy we are actually pursuing is visible in where money has gone for three years: larger structure tents, a design team and two corporate account managers. Harwood is moving toward full-service corporate and wedding events, where an order averages several thousand dollars, and away from small backyard party orders, which make up about 60 percent of our orders but under a fifth of revenue.

Two systems tell different stories. The first, our rental management system, is clearly tied to the strategy. Large events depend on knowing exactly which tents, floor panels and generators are free on a given weekend across three warehouses, and the system's date-based availability is what lets account managers quote a 300-guest wedding with confidence. When the system is wrong, we either turn away business we could have served or promise equipment we do not have. That is a real dependency, not shared vocabulary.

The second system, our website's online ordering, points the other way. It was built eight years ago to sell small packages, twenty chairs and two tables, with a credit card at checkout. It has no way to request a site visit, describe a venue or upload a floor plan, which is how corporate and wedding clients begin. Our account managers say most of their leads arrive by phone or referral and that the website sends them few. The site supports the business we are leaving.

Henderson and Venkatraman (1999) argued that information technology creates value when business strategy and technology strategy are aligned with each other and with the infrastructure that supports them. A meta-analysis later found positive average relationships between several dimensions of this alignment and firm performance, which suggests the earlier talk of an "alignment paradox" was overstated (Gerow et al., 2014). By that standard Harwood is half aligned: its core operational system serves the strategy, and its most visible customer-facing system does not.

Can a system be aligned with a strategy the company has never written down, or does alignment require a stated strategy first?

Reply to Keisha

Keisha, you said your clinic's patient portal is aligned with its strategy of improving access because both use the word access. I wonder whether the dependency is real. If the portal disappeared tomorrow, would the clinic's access measures change, or would patients simply phone as most of them do now? That test might show whether the link is a dependency or a coincidence of vocabulary.

Reply to Martin

Martin, I agree that your distributor's warehouse system is tightly tied to its low-cost strategy. Chan and Reich (2007), reviewing the alignment research, stress that alignment has to be maintained as strategy changes rather than achieved once. Your company's move into same-day delivery might test whether a system built for cost can serve speed.

References

Chan, Y. E., & Reich, B. H. (2007). IT alignment: What have we learned? Journal of Information Technology, 22(4), 297-315. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jit.2000109

Gerow, J. E., Grover, V., Thatcher, J., & Roth, P. L. (2014). Looking toward the future of IT-business strategic alignment through the past: A meta-analysis. MIS Quarterly, 38(4), 1159-1186. https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2014/38.4.10

Henderson, J. C., & Venkatraman, N. (1999). Strategic alignment: Leveraging information technology for transforming organizations. IBM Systems Journal, 38(2.3), 472-484. https://doi.org/10.1147/sj.1999.5387096