Dinesh Raju.

M | ABM10020 | Section D

IT Doesnt Matter
In todays emerging business world IT has become an important component to overcome their competitors firms are spending more on their information technology, almost half of their resources are spent. Now a days IT has become a necessity for every firms existence since it adds strategic value to a company. By this way companies edge over their competitors who do not have a strategic IT support. During its inception IT was a prime driver of the business as it makes a business system more integrated and innovative. For example it is still the most preferred systems followed in the ticket reservation systems. The present developing technology has made IT system even cheaper and more accessible to people around the world, attracting them to implement it in their business model. But now firms should rather focus on risk than the strategic advantage gained by the IT systems. Companies fail to focus on their other requirement and optimization of the other resources by focusing too much in the IT. Power is one such resource which a company predominantly requires, but companies are rarely making attempts to curb the lapses. Companies are making an unwise decisions of spending too much of their resources in IT without analysis the outcomes of IT systems. They should cut down the costs on IT instead of finding a strategic advantage through IT systems which would only reduce companys resources and increase the risk. There are ways in which a company can reduce the risk of IT management, one such approach is to evaluate the expected returns from IT investments. Segregating prerequisites from those which can be incremental, unnecessary or even counterproductive. Looking forward for much simpler and a cheaper system.

Dinesh Raju. M | ABM10020 | Section D

Companies should make a firm decision before implementing an IT system since they are soon going to be followed by another firm, become obsolete in a few years or even flawed. Firms are now waking from their it dreams and began to curb their expenses on IT systems, they are now just waiting for a system to get implemented in the market and then later on buy it only if the software is made under standard protocols, by a trusted manufacturer and widely being used in the businesses. By this companies can have a strategic advantage as the impatient firm buy nave products which are more prone to failure. This happens because IT systems are very essential for any firm but if they are not in consensus with the firms objectives then the risks of bearing the costs are more than profitability of the firm. Companies should always remember the business environment is ever changing and should not expect that history will repeat itself, in this case it will not workout. Many technology firms have repositioned their products and IT support systems with changing business environment. One such firm is Dell which are exploited the PC market has now moved on to strategic services, storage systems. Firms should focus on their defense from offense they should broaden their views on IT system as the operational risk may include technical glitches, obsolescence, service outages, unreliable vendors, security breaches and even terrorism. In the longer run there is a greater risk of overspending in IT systems, IT may provide an edge over completion but it does not change a companys position drastically. So what is more important is that companies should essentially separate their cost structure with respect to essential requirements. At a high level a strong cost management requires rigorous evaluation of investments to explore the simplest and cheaper alternatives. IT management on due course of time would become boring and the key success to any firm would no longer be an aggressive advantage but to play defensive roles by analysis the risks of implementing an IT solutions pragmatically.

Dinesh Raju. M | ABM10020 | Section D

Craven Book Store The Great IT horror story

This is a film based on real story which happened in a book store and it also tells us about why do computer disasters happen and what went wrong in the implementation. This is the story of Craven Books. They thought a new IT system would revolutionize their business but it ended up almost destroying it. The film traces the story of the project, and the things that went wrong. A major mistake was that they were overambitious. They tried to do everything at once - the 'big bang' approach. Also, Craven trusted too much on its IT suppliers. Their advice was to go for an existing system, customized for Craven's purposes but the owner took a disastrous choice of implementing a state of the art IT system. But the IT system followed a system of packaging books in bundles rather than individually, this system entirely works automatically. The store general manager said that on storage the books may lose weight from the time of printing, the IT enabled automatic retrieval system chooses books on standard weights only. This resulted in a wrong selection of books and even if a human intervention is made the system would still reject the parcel. But this resulted in a huge problem when customers started to contact the firm saying that they did not get the book what they have ordered for. This was an error committed by the IT systems. The employees were unaware of what is happening and what went wrong with the system that is expected to booster their competence in the market, is contributing to their downfall which might not have happened if Craven has stuck to their old fashion ways of retrieving and packing systems. A large number of employees lost their jobs due to this IT system, as it is fully automated the human aspect was not really required. And moreover the employees who were working in the firm were also laid off due to the downfall of business. Craven book store began to lose their loyal customers and the sales was going down due to their faulty bundling systems.

Dinesh Raju. M | ABM10020 | Section D

IT consultant when approached said that the company was not clear in its objective at all. The IT systems were in place only on their demand and designed based on their requirements. The book store sued the consultancy firm for supplying a faulty IT system, but the IT consultancy firm sued Craven for not clearing the bills which cost the firm 1 million Euros. So finally Craven went back to their good old ways of inventory management and packaging systems after losing a mammoth capital on IT management services, which was an utter failure. Craven could only save itself from going bust by sacking many of its staff and going back to its old system. Nobody was really in charge of the project - so there was no one to take responsibility when things went wrong. The film draws key lessons from the Craven experience. Think about the business first - you may not even need to computerize. If you do computerize, simplify the existing systems. Above all, a firm should not underestimate the cost of computerization it will always be far more than the original estimate.