STRATEGY TRIANGLE

Successful firms have an overriding business strategy that drives bot organizational strategy and IS strategy. The decision made regarding the structure, hiring practices, and other components of the organizational strategy, as well as diceision regarding applications, hardware and other IS components, are all driven by the firm’s business objectives, strategies, and tactics.

IS strategy can itself effect and is affected by changes in a firm’s business and organizational strategies. In order to perpetuate the balance needed for successful operation, changes in the IS strategy must be accompanied by changes in both the organizational and overall business strategy. If a firm design its business strategy to use IS to gain strategic advantage, the leadership position in IS can only be sustained by constant innovation. The business, IS , and organizational strategies must constantly be adjusted.

IS strategy always involves consequences intended or not within business and organizational strategies. For instance, placing computers on employee desktops, without an accompanying set of changes to job descriptions, process design, compensation plans, and business tactics will fail to produce the anticipated productivity improvement.

A strategy is a plan. A business strategy is a well articulated vision of where a business seeks to go and how it expects to get there. It is the form by which a business communicates its goals. Management constructs this plan in response to market forces, customer demands, and organizational capabilities. Customer demands comprise the wants and needs of the individuals and companies who purchase the products and services available in the marketplace.

Organizational strategy includes the organization’s design as well as the choices it makes to define, set up, coordinate, and control its work processes. The organizational strategy is a plan that answers the question ‘How will the company organize in order to achieve its goals and implement its business strategy?’ For instance, a simple framework for understanding the design of an organization is the business diamond, organization try to change their cultures but fail to change the way they manage and control cannot be effective.

IS strategy is the plan an organization uses in providing information services. IS allows a company to implement its business strategy. Business strategy is a function of competition for example, what is the customer wan and what the competition does.

Reference:
1. Information Systems Strategy Triangle. From web: http://cobhomepages.cob.isu.edu/KreggAytes/mba624/notes/IS_StrategyTriangle.htm
2. Michael E. Porter, (1985). Competitive Advantage. New York: Free Press