Strategy Alignment through Systems
1- Strategy Alignment through Systems
Our Peppard and Ward reading in this unit describes several dimensions and aspects of business and systems strategies that need to be aligned in order to create a unified approach to moving forward for the business in which we we find ourselves working. The assigned journal article readings offer additional perspectives through which alignment between the business and our systems — particularly enterprise systems — can e either optimal or suboptimal (or misaligned).
Misalignment can occur between different aspects of our strategy, or misalignment can occur in the way our systems support different aspects of our strategies. While we can’t always bring these misaligned aspects into alignment, the MIS systems we implement need to provide management with the ability to monitor and control aspects of the business around the misaligned aspects so that issues that arise around the misalignment can be managed more effectively. In other words, if X and Y can’t be properly aligned, let’s make sure we monitor and control both X and Y so that we have visibility into issues that might arise because of their misalignment.
Discuss an aspect of possible business-misalignment or system-misalignment that you can envision happening in an enterprise, and use one or more perspectives offered in our journal readings in this unit to describe how an MIS might put measurement or monitoring capabilities in place to improve management of the situation you imagine. You can pick any business scenario you find interesting, please be very specific about the aspect of your reading that you are applying in your discuss (i.e. cite your source for your post from the readings).
Response Guideline
Post your response of 1-3 paragraphs (about 200-300 words) early in the week, and then reply to at least two initial responses of your peers, particularly focusing on responses that might differ from your own. Also respond appropriately to anyone who posts questions against your own postings.
2- Cargo System Alignment Issues
The cargo system that we’re working on in the activity for this unit has some potential strategic misalignments that we might want to consider in our analysis. For the sake of this discussion, presume that our cargo enterprise has the following not-necessarily-aligned strategic requirements:
Our system typically runs at full capacity, so we want to find a way to prioritize more highly profitable shipments over less profitable business. Value or profitability might accrue based on which routes tend to be more profitable ,which customers (shipper or consignee) tend to have higher volume, or which higher-value commodities tend to be present in various cargo movement.
We promise shippers quick service, so we need to be able to deliver empty containers to their locations fast, even if it means we have to stage and have more empty containers available at each facility. This might require absorbing the cost of moving empty contains among facilities to ensure available empty stock when needed.
Economies of scale accrue to longer trips with more cargo (e.g. large ocean sailings with thousands of containers provide the lowest per container cost). We should try to encourage shippers to use larger port terminals so that we use fewer short-haul transits to consolidate shipments at the bigger ports.
While these strategies don’t necessarily align, let’s presume that our system must meet these requirements.
Discuss some capabilities you might include in your Containerized Cargo System as a result of these requirements if you are asked to explain how you’ll be able to monitor and measure your system’s compliance with these requirements. Given that they don’t necessarily align well, how will the system monitor and control how well they are being met, and help identify issues that might arise as a result of their misalignment.
Response Guideline
Note: You don’t need to be completely comprehensive in your posts. Don’t try to solve every aspect of the problem that comes to mind. Pick an aspect that you see as important, and focus your response on that. A complete solution, if it’s reasonably possible, will emerge from the collection of everyone’s responses. No one response needs to tackle it all.
Post your response of 1-3 paragraphs (about 200-300 words) early in the week, and then reply to at least two initial responses of your peers, particularly focusing on responses that might differ from your own. Also respond appropriately to anyone who posts questions against your own postings.
3- Requirements Alignment
The requirements you generate for a management information system generally, and your semester project specifically, need to align well with the requirements of basic logic as well any issues of representing and modeling organizations, people, facilities, and equipment in the real-world. We help ensure that alignment using the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as a set of quality criteria for representing anything in our MIS. Figures 4.12 through 4.15 in our Biehl (2016) reading illustrate the logic of this alignment in steps a-h. These steps tell a type of story that we want to be able to tell for any MIS we define and develop, including one for your semester project.
Discuss portions of this story for the Cargo system dimensions that are emerging in your work in the u04a1 assignment. Try to fill in whatever you can about the cargo story as it aligns with the use of the BFO as your quality control guidance. You don’t have to tell the whole story, but collectively the thread will develop the entire story over the course of the week. Try to add new material to the discussion by not repeating what others have said unless you want to introduce new elements or considerations to those earlier comments. The later in the week you post, the more nuanced or comprehensive your postings should be.
Response Guideline
Post your response of 1-3 paragraphs (about 200-300 words) early in the week, and then reply to at least two initial responses of your peers, particularly focusing on responses that might differ from your own. Also respond appropriately to anyone who posts questions against your own postings.
Answer preview Strategy Alignment through Systems
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