ICT Strategy Essay Example

ICT Strategy Essay Example ICT Strategy Essay ICT Strategy Essay Abstract Information technology has indeed established itself as a significant component of business over the past two decades which provided one of the most functional competitive advantages. This is due to the fact of the vast utilities it offers and thus becomes available anywhere around the world. However, Nicholas Carr suggested that as information technology has grown in power and ubiquity, its competitive advantages have lost and thus it doesnt matter anymore. In this paper, it is argued that IT does indeed matter due to its wide use and necessity in contrast to Cars view. Also, it is further urge that competitive advantage has always been temporal in technological innovations and this is explained with the view of IT as multiple technologies and as a single type of technology which points out obsolete technology like IT still exists with competitive advantage and matters. Lastly, the discussion reveals that the degree of innovativeness in the IT realm is so far greater than other classification of technologies that we could not make an assumption whether or not IT will be less of a competitive advantage in the years to come. The next discussions ill be focusing on the analysis of these ideas as expressed by Nicholas Carr, and will be applied to analyzing further certain projects in a given company scenario. Introduction IT is the latest series of broadly adopted technologies, after the railroad. Due to their usefulnesss, the commonalities between the two are primarily observed in the manner that people have invested in them. A deeper look at these types of commodities will reveal that the pattern by which the similarity is competitive advantages, making us able to argue that they have the same level of supply, demand ND necessity in the market. Gradually, many companies will try to possess the same technology and provision of the same service which will eventually lead to the decline of the prices that can be offered since everybody already has it. This way, the investment made for the possession of that technology becomes a question of whether or not in truly IT provides a significant return on investment since it is now hard to Justify that the revenue company earned was in fact due to IT function, or that it has rather only become a necessity due to its pervasive use. In other word, has IT got competitive advantage or does it matter? (Carr, 2003) Cars Article Cars articles centers on the fact that to some extent, certain technologies such as IT has become less of a competitive advantage, making it a not what it had seemed when it came out as a new product. The eventual wide spread of the technology soon led to the possession of it by everyone, making the perception of its competitive advantage an obsolete thing. There are many fundamental issues in this argument which we will be tackling in the following discussions. . The widespread of technology may entail necessity. Although it is true that trains and railroads have now ceased to become a competitive advantage as compared to when it was first utilized several decades ago, this can be attributed to many factors. The functionality that is derived from trains has been already established as a useful and necessary component of businesses, especially businesses may range from those that provide shipping services of different cargo materials that needed to be transported from one place to another or the remonstration of people as done in major subways around cities as it provides a cheaper cost of transportation compared to using automobile vehicles. Thereby, we can argue that train ceased to become a competitive advantage truly because it has become so common place and thus cheaper. However, what we point out here is that the widespread nature of any technologies does not say anything about whether it matters or not. It only tells us that it has become popular, thus increasing demand because of its proven usefulness, and that points towards the argument that it does ended matter, since people now see it as a necessity that cannot be ignored since it has become so integrated with the lifestyle of human being that to ignore the necessary functions it provides is Just going to bring even more disadvantage. What Carr has only argued is that competitive advantage has diminished, but this should not in any ways lead to the conclusion that one should cease to invest in IT because the issue is not that IT has become obsolete, and therefore has lost its competitive advantage, but because it has become too necessary, that it has lost its competitive advantage. 2. Competitive advantage has always been temporal in technological innovations It is important to point out that, technology especially at the rate that it progresses today, is always an issue of determining how long it will provide competitive advantage since there is always a chance that newer and better technologies that may render that technology obsolete . This is not a new thing, and as a result, certain technologies are set aside when they have become less useful. The IT field, however is a large classification of many technologies that within homeless compete against each other. Better systems are adopted against others for their efficiency, user friendliness, and lower cost. In theory, if we view IT as multiple technologies, there are always competitive advantages in which faster and newer systems are more competitive than obsolete technologies (Millard and Porter, 1985). However, if we view IT as a whole, competitive advantage is dwindling due to ubiquity. This should not always lead to the conclusion that IT no longer matters because it is not an obsolete technology, and the answer lies in our previous argument: IT as a whole has proven to be so useful that it has become so commonplace and necessary (Meant, 2007) 3. The innovativeness in the IT realm is massive Unlike the railroad, the possibilities in the IT industry are infinite. The areas of application for an IT staff may range from creating applications for word processing, designing performance management systems for companies to implement on their operations, accounting software may be useful for accounting departments, internet utilities such as Google Docs, Google Drive, file conversion tools, social media and any other thousands of other uses. What we argue here is that the degree of usability in IT field is so huge that it has not yet fully explored to assume that it will be less competitive in the future. While Carr has successfully showed data to support his argument, it is yet early to dismiss it Project analysis The initial observations of the proposals to close down the information service department are the following: outsourcing puts the company at higher risk of losing the current information service team rather than outsourcing. 1. Project management yester The purpose of a custom developed management system is to produce a system that is fitted to the perceived needs of a particular project based on the nature of the business. Adopting an outsourced project management system may include functionalities that are not required, and hence entails cost on the company for additional IT features. What should the company do here is to re-design the project management system to add features that the company prefers to have, such as due date and resource tracker. 2. Marketing analysis system It is similar to saying that electricity has ceased to matter Just because it is now widely used. Actually, electricity has been less of a competitive advantage because no corporation nowadays can function without it. And the same argument can be made for IT. IT is slowly becoming electricity, something that organizations will always need because of its proven necessity. IT may be decreasing in its capability to provide competitive advantage, but it is certainly something, like electricity, that inevitably matters. Broader, G. (2012, 1, 19).