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For the final assignment in this course you will research, design, and deliver a Strategic Information Technology Plan. You will base your plan on the
ISM645 Strategic IT Planning Case Study
Company Profile
. The final assignment will use concepts from the previous weeks in the course. You must support your statements throughout the plan with evidence from your sources. There are a minimum of 5 scholarly sources, including the text, required for this assignment. (The FindIt@AU, EBSCOhost, and ProQuest tools in Ashford Library are good starting points for your search. It is also highly recommended that you search through the specialized journals in information technology (e.g., Journal of Information Systems Management, Communications of the ACM, International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, and International Journal of Multidisciplinary Approaches and Studies. (Consult the
MISM Credible Resource Guide (Links to an external site.)
as well as the recommended resources within this course for search tips and ideas for your research.)
The Strategic IT Plan
Outline
Read the ISM645 Strategic IT Planning Case Study Company Profile from the perspective of a Chief Information Officer with the firm and prepare a strategic IT plan to help grow the business over the next three years. Your strategic plan must be future-oriented and include the following headings and content. An IT Strategic Plan
template
is provided as a guideline to help you get started. However, do not attempt to ‘fill in the template’ as a way to complete this assignment. There are many elements in the case study that are not in the basic template, but will need to be added and addressed in your plan.
Executive Introduction (Summary) & Thesis Statement
Introduce the IT Strategic Plan. Summarize the contents of this document. The Executive Summary should be concise, to the point, and give a clear understanding of what is in the document. Be sure to include a general thesis statement in the last paragraph.
Strategic Mission, Vision, and Horizon Statement
Specify the period to which this plan pertains. Create a one-to-two sentence IT Mission and Vision Statement for MarkO Ltd. Assess the organization’s strategic vision with respect to technology and business goals. Consider the various business models that are relevant and review the concepts of a strategic paradox in order to determine where competitive advantage can be acquired. Explain what the company’s time horizon will be in the future. (This can be expressed in a series of general accomplishments desired over a period of time and what the company will look like when it gets to that time or horizon.)
Purpose of Plan: Indicate the reason for creating this IT strategic plan. Determine the basic premise for the plan and explain why this plan is being created and what the significance of this plan is for the company. Specify what the plan will accomplish.
Corporate Strategy: Describe the strategy of the enterprise. Obtain this information from the Company Profile and surmise what the overall company strategy will be in the next three years. This provides the superstructure of how IT will help the business meets its goals and help it realize its Strategic Vision. Evaluate the business environment and address the competitive advantage of the strategic implementation of technology, and the possible implementation of “S” Curve planning methods in your plan. Evaluate the needs of the company and determine the major strategic planning elements and concepts to support the short (1 year)-, medium (2 years)-, and long-term (3+ years) goals of your organization. This includes a general description of the organization and how the business scope and organization are aligned. Tools such as the 5 Force Model and SWOT Analysis found in the previous weeks of the course text readings will assist you in maturing your plan. Explain the strategic plan(s) from the Company Profile including MarkO’s corporate strategy, business strategy, information technology organization, business initiatives to support the corporate strategy, and IT initiative to support the business initiatives.
Business Initiatives to Support Corporate Strategy: Based on the Company Profile, create a minimum of three business initiatives that are planned for the next three years that will support the Corporate Strategy.
IT Strategy: Briefly describe your IT strategy. The IT strategy should have the business strategy as its basis. Spend at least a paragraph on each element below stating your IT Strategy. Among the many areas of IT, examine data warehousing, ecommerce, technology infrastructure, and technology products and/or services you want to include in your Strategic IT Plan. Your Strategy should address the following IT Categories.
Within each IT category above address the following elements.
IT Strategic Plan to Support Business Initiatives: Develop a list of the IT systems that are required to support the planned business initiatives. (There is a matrix within the provided template that may assist with this.)
IT Strategic Plan – Roadmap Chart: Graphically depict the future of MarkO Ltd.’s Strategic Plan and provide a simple but powerful view of the future through coordinated plans and steps. This is the essence of strategic planning. Using tools and concepts that were covered in Weeks 4 and 5, apply strategic concepts to create a Roadmap Flow Chart (or some other graphical representation of your plan) to depict the schedule for implementing the approved IT systems. Remember to address a 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year strategy in your plan. Be sure to provide a high-level description of the strategic plans ahead including the identification of future moves and prioritized goals and objectives.
Key Performance Indicators: Insert a series of metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), on how you will measure the success of your plan. A Key Performance Indicator is a recognizable value that represents a measure of progress, value, or status. This could be a percentage of completion or whether an action plan is on track or off track. It can also be a recognizable value of an amount compared to a total goal amount. The IT Strategic Plan Template has an example of a KPI Report for your reference
IT Strategic Execution Plan: Explain how you will execute, communicate, and monitor your plan as it moves forward, listing the actions you will take with a brief description of how you will implement the IT Strategy. Briefly describe how you would roll out the plan to senior management.
IT Strategic Plan Summary: In a one-to-three paragraph summary, describe what it took to develop and write the IT Strategic Plan. Explain the information in the Company Profile that was helpful as well as any information that was missing or would have been important to know.
Appendices as applicable: Appendices might include additional graphs, charts, or tables that further illustrate points within your strategic plan.
The Strategic IT PlanMust include a separate title page with the following:Title of strategic planStudent’s nameCourse name and numberInstructor’s nameDate submitted
ISM645 Information Technology Strategic Plan
Template
V1.8
Introduction: How to Use This Tool
This template is developed for small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) that do not have the
resources to perform full IT governance to develop a complex IT strategy. This tool provides an
outline that allows CIOs to develop a simple, yet effective IT strategic plan.
Complete all the sections, using the instructions provided. Each section contains an example that
can be removed once the document is complete.
[Insert Company Name] IT Strategic Plan
Author:
Created on:
Last Modified on:
[Insert Name]
[Insert Date]
[Insert Date]
Executive Introduction (Summary) & Thesis Statement
Introduce the IT Strategic Plan. Give a summary of what is in the document. The Execuvtive
Summary should be a 30 second read and give a clear understanding of what is in the document.
In the last paragraph, include a thesis statement.
Example: This IT Strategic Plan lays out the one, two, and three year plans for MarkO Ltd, with
regards to IT Areas of Applications Development, Networking, Operating Systems, Databases,
Organization, and Hardware; and the ability for this plan to support the business initiatives of the
company.
Strategic IT Mission, IT Vision, and Horizon Statements
Include the IT Mission and IT Vision Statement here. Also, specify the time periods to which this
plan pertains.
Example:
“The mission of this company is to …..”
“This Company will be the ….”
“This plan is expected to cover the period from 01/Sept/2013 to 31/Aug/2015, with strategic plans
for each year noted.”
Purpose of Plan
Indicate the reason for creating this IT strategic plan. Specify what the plan will accomplish.
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ISM645 Strategic Information Technology Planning v1.1
Example:
The purpose of this plan is to help our company achieve its IT Strategy. It is meant as a guide to
decision making in IT. Incoming tasks to IT will be prioritized and executed (as much as possible)
using this plan as a guide. While exceptions may occur, they should be exceptions, not the
everyday rule.
Corporate Strategy
Describe the strategy of the enterprise. Obtain this information from the CEO or a publication
from top executives.
Example:
Our business strategy is to retain existing customers through continuing to improve our existing
product line as well as gain new customers though aggressive marketing campaigns. We may
also expand the spending of our existing customers by developing other related product lines.
Business Initiatives to Support Corporate Strategy
List the business initiatives that are planned for the period that will support the business strategy.
Example:
Strategy Name
Retain Existing
Customers
Gain New Customers
Business Initiative
Loyalty Campaign
Target Completion
Date
Q1
Mail Out Satisfaction Survey
Q3
“10% Off New Purchase”
Campaign
Q3
Expand into Asia
Q2
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ISM645 Strategic Information Technology Planning v1.1
Expected
Impact
+10%
Renewal
Rate
+ 1%
Renewal
Rate
+ $1M
Expanded
Revenue
+ $10M
Expand Current
Customer Spending
Strategy Name
Divide Existing Sales
Territories
Q3
Develop Related Product X
Q4
Business Initiative
Target
Completion Date
New
Revenue
+ $1M
New
Revenue
+ $5
Expanded
Revenue
Expected
Impact
IT Strategy
Briefly describe your IT strategy. The IT strategy should have the business strategy as its basis.
Spend at least a paragraph on each element below stating your IT Strategy:
Questions to consider:
• What kind and style of Organizataion will carry out the IT Strategy?
• What is the organization’s operational profile?
• What is the organization’s risk profile?
• Is the organization cost conscious?
• Is IT development or purchase focused?
Your strategy should address the following IT categories:
• Application development
• Hardware and infrastructure acquisition
• Data center builds and adjustments
• Security
• Compliance and governance
• Networks
• Data (Including Databases, Data Warehouses, Data sources and Big Data)
Example:
To enable our corporate strategy, our IT Strategy is to assist our marketing campaigns by
enhancing our toolset in order to derive insight on brand and product performance by market
segment and geography. Additionally, we will strengthen our product development support
structure by automating product production capabilities.
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ISM645 Strategic Information Technology Planning v1.1
IT Strategic Plan to Support Business Initiatives
List the IT systems that are required to support the planned business initiatives. Ensure to include
any necessary notes.
Example:
Business
Initiative
IT System
Required
Year(s) this
project will
take place
Ball Park Estimates
Time
Resources
Cost
Approved
Loyalty
Campaign
E-mail
Distribution
System
2014
n/a
n/a
n/a
Yes
Mail Out
Satisfaction
Survey
10% Off
“New
Purchase”
Campaign
All
Campaigns
E-mail
Distribution
System
E-mail
Distribution
System
2014
(See note 1)
40
days
2 FTE
$10,000
No
2015
(See note 2)
20
days
1 FTE
$5,000
Yes
Campaign
Reporting
System
Servers,
Workstation
s
Product X
2014-2016
(See note 3)
200
days
2 FTE
$10,000
Yes
2016
40
days
3 FTE
$50,000
Yes
2016
200
days
10 FTE
$100,000
Yes
Expand into
Asia
Develop
Related
Product X
Related Notes:
1. Survey Capable. Our current e-mail distribution system is not capable of handling in-line
survey questions. We will need to add support for this capability. We are assuming we
will go with the simplest solution (link to a survey Web page) and will create our own
survey instead of purchasing a survey package.
2. Coupon Capable. Our current e-mail distribution system is not capable of handling
attachments or coupons. We will need to add support for this capability. We are
assuming we will go with the simplest solution (embedding the coupon in the e-mail).
3. The new Campaign Reporting system will consist of the following project components:
a. Define brand/product performance metrics
b. Develop data warehouse architecture
c. Design/build data warehouse/data marts
d. Design/build ETL mechanisms
e. Design/build dashboards, queries, and reports
Business
Initiative
IT System
or
Initiative
Required
Year(s) this
project will
take place
Ball Park Estimates
Time
(# Days)
Resources
(# FTE)
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ISM645 Strategic Information Technology Planning v1.1
Cost
($)
Approved
(Y/N)
Key Performance Indicators
Insert a series of metrics on how you will measure the success of your plan. Metrics can be
constructed in many different ways. Some things to consider however in any metric is: Ease of
Read, Accuracy, Clarity of Terms & Meaning, and Take Aways. Using a red, green, yellow color
indicator along with a printed percentage and name tag, can give a lot of information in a small
space. Stay away from the use of approximations unless the metric is for estimations in general.
Try to use acronyms only if the audience will clearly and quickly understand them. Consider the
take away effect of the report…when the person sees this, what will they remember when they
walk away?
Example:
Here is a sample of a monthly project update. There is a lot of information on this one page.
However, in a 10 second time period, the viewer can determine if the project is on track, where it
is in the schedule, whether the cost plan is on track, and who is in charge.
Project Gemini
Reporting Period: 08 2015
IT Project Schedule Segment
Q2
2014
Q3
2014
Anticipation
Q4
2014
Foundation
Q1
2015
Q2
2015
Q3
2015
Schedule
Q4
2015
Q1
2016
CutOver Hypercare
Completion
Go-live Athens
Foundation
Q2
2016
Risk
Q3
2016
Go-live Mechanicsburg
Completion
Resources
Business Case
On Cost Plan
Hypercare
Go-live HVDC
Project Objective
Go-live Date : Baseline September 1, 2015, Rescheduled to Oct 18th
Location / Functions : Athens, Dolwick, Raleigh – CCC, FICO, Logistics Resale
Next Milestones: Solution Acceptance Sept 21st, CutOver Gate Review Oct 5th
bridge SAP conversion of US Legacy
ReSale ,Inventory Management and
Distribution Systems supporting Athens
TX and Mechanicsburg PA HVDCs.
6 Primary functions in scope : CCC,
Distribution, FiCO, Inventory
Management ReSale and Transportation
• 92 of 101 ChR developments delivered (81 of 101 Tested and Validated),
• LQT (local qualification testing) Completed (Validated and Closed 140 TCS), 3 week FIT (final integration testing) campaign conducted
with 106 Scenarios run, 67% validated
• Completed Purchase Order and Sales Order Dry Run migration tests
• Trial Conversion /TC3 Data Load completed
• Completed Train The Trainer Training Campaign
• Added Batch Management to Scope for Country of Origin configuration and testing completed
-Completed Oct Physical inventory plan with FiCO and Athnes to accommodate the revised Go Live date
• Deliver and test remaining change requests– Sep 18th, 5 ChRs to be delivered 9/14, 4 to be delivered post go live
• Fix and retest remaining 5 open FIT Defects
• Kick Off End User training – Sep 8th
• Complete FIT validation and solution acceptance (Steering Committee Validation Sept 21st)
• Complete Business Go-Live Readiness Assessment – Site readiness checklist and domain SIM meetings initiated
• Development delivery and quality, 114 defects vs 60 ChRs
• Outbound EDI mapping and development incomplete, hybrid
architecture and hard coded legacy logic is delaying progress,
• SAP customer data inaccuracies requires unplanned clean up
effort and to reestablish the governance/run process
• Compressed cutover schedule
• QA test environment issues and constraints (Q2C QA isnt sized
for DC volumes, Cordys QA outages, SAP config transports)
Confidential Property of Schneider Electric
• Working with development leads to expedite development
• Global and external experts added to team to confirm
architecture and complete mapping, dedicated GD
development capacity assisted
• Dedicated data correction team assembled, run state
governance process being reestablished in May
• Detailed planning and extensive dry run testing where possible
• Know and accepted risk, delays partially mitigated by 2 weeks
of LQT contingency
Mitigation
Risks
Next Steps
Accomplished
Status
HVDC
Project Manager:
Richard Morten
Business Transformation Leader:
John Williamson
Project Sponsor:
Ted Kleem
Program:
North America IT
DMT PR Number:
PR-22051
Funded Amount:
$13M
IT Strategic Plan – Roadmap Chart
Insert a Roadmap Flow Chart (or some other graphical representation of your plan) to depict the
schedule for implementing the approved IT systems. This plan ensures that resources are
available for the projects at the time they are required. Categorize your plan into 1, 2, and 3 year
strategy.
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ISM645 Strategic Information Technology Planning v1.1
2
Example:
Figure 1: Roadmap Chart of IT Projects in support of the Corporate Strategic Horizon
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ISM645 Strategic Information Technology Planning v1.1
IT Strategy Execution Plan
How will you communicate the new IT Strategy to the Company? List the actions you will take
with a brief detail of how you will implement the IT Strategy.
Example:
Figure 2: Execution Plan for the IT Strategic Plan
1. Every board member and member of management should get a copy of the plan.
2. Consider distributing all (or highlights from) the plan to everyone in the organization. It’s
amazing how even the newest staff member gains quick context, appreciation, and meaning from
review of the strategic plan.
3. Post your mission and vision and values statements on the walls of your main offices. Consider
giving each employee a card with the statements (or highlights from them) on the card.
4. Publish portions of your plan in your regular newsletter, and advertising and marketing
materials (brochures, ads, etc.).
5. Train board members and employees on portions of the plan during scheduled orientations.
6. Include portions of the plan in policies and procedures, including the employee manual.
7. Consider copies of the plan for major stakeholders, for example, funders/investors, trade
associations, potential collaborators, vendors/suppliers, etc.
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ISM645 Strategic Information Technology Planning v1.1
IT Strategic Plan Summary
In a one to three paragraph summary, describe what it took to develop and write the IT Strategic
Plan. What information was helpful? What information was missing or would have been importan
to know?
Signatures:
CIO/IT Manager:
Date:
___________________________
CEO/President:
_____________________________
Date:
___________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________________________________
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ISM645 Strategic Information Technology Planning v1.1
ISM 645 Strategic IT Planning Case Study Company Profile
V 2.2
Company Information
MarkO Ltd. is an international cloud services treasury company headquartered in Costa Mesa,
California with offices in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Minsk,
Belarus, Tokyo, Beijing, and Dubai. It provides financial treasury services, via a cloud-based
software solution, that customer’s access via the web, without requiring hardware or special
software. Customers pay a monthly fee for an instance (copy of the application) of the product,
which is a representation of their treasury management system, but hosted by MarkO Ltd. In its
data center, instead of in their own data center. Treasury management services includes cash and
liquidity management, risk management, hub communication services to financial clearing
houses (and transfer pricing centers for monetary exchange), and supply chain/invoicing
services.
The company is comprised of 600 employees and 75 consultants in various areas of the business
(although 80% of them are in information technology). Although now headquartered in Costa
Mesa, California, the company was first managed out of Lyon, France for over 12 years. The
company is now 15 years old and is considered to be an old start-up or what is sometimes called
a Maturing Scale-Up.
The company is led by Jean Pierre Rochard, the CEO. He reports to a board of directors
comprised of three French directors, four American directors, one German director, and one
British director. He has eight direct reports that include EVP Sales, SVP Marketing, SVP Client
Services, CFO, CIO, COO, SVP Channel Sales, and SVP Distribution. Legal and HR report to
the CFO. Until recently, the information technology (IT) department reported to Rochard. Two
months ago, Rochard hired a new CIO to run the IT department. This new CIO must quickly
assess the business, specifically the IT situation, and develop a Strategic IT Plan for the
company.
Financial Considerations of the Business
Annual revenues are 45M€ on a net operational cost of 60M€. The rise in costs is associated with
the addition of three new product lines that have been in development for the last two years and
are now about to be delivered. The CEO is considering capitalization via a venture capital
insertion, which would be a second round of Venture Capital (VC) funding for the company and
would be projected at 40M€. He also has an option of financing the next three years using a line
of credit from his bank. He can capitalize much of his development and R&D work, with hopeful
forecasted sales that will help him break even within the next three years. Either choice will
allow him to splash his new products and project a positive margin over the next five years.
Strategic Business Goals
Rochard and the executive team have completed their five-year plan and have determined their top
business goals are as follows:
MarkO must have the production capability to house large companies (companies over
3000 users), not just small to medium businesses, with the same or faster speeds within the
next year
MarkO must be able to increase its revenue by 20% each year for the next five years while
holding operational costs to a growth of 5% each year.
Consolidate the Business CRM system for use by the entire company over the next two
years
Implement a new Business Enterprise Resource Planning system to include all financial,
HRMS, Sales, Marketing, Operations, Professional Services, and Product Management.
Implement a new Fraud Product Line, disruptive to the market, with a break-even revenue
goal within 2 years
Implement a Customer Business Intelligence Data Mart service with a break-even revenue
goal within 3 years
Establish a firm sales organization and regional scope in the Middle East within 2 years
Establish a firm sales presence, including a sales headquarters, regional and professional
support center in mainland China
Segment the MarkO product into discrete modules with interoperable connections and the
ability to integrate new modules quickly and accurately within the next four years
Increase speed of new customer expansion (on-boarding new customers onto the closest
regional data center) into regional areas from the current 3-5 month turn around to several
weeks within the next two years
Develop Application Program Interfaces with major ERP vendors for MarkO products to
easily integrate within the next two years
Introduce Cryptocurrency management to the core application of the MarkO program and
to the various elements of the MarkO product offerings in the next year
The Role of the Strategic IT Plan
The Strategic IT Plan is a serious component of the company’s strategic decision documentation
and overall business plans for Jean Pierre and the Board. It will help them determine the various
costs for growth of the products and services. It will also give them a one, two, and three-year
projection of capacity, which will help them determine volume and price point. Jean Pierre
would also like to have some simple and easy to view key performance indicators. These should
be recognized values that tells him and the other executives that the plan is on track and
achieving what it set out to do. These will figure strongly in the revenue projections for the
company and determine how fast the R&D debt can be washed. Additionally, larger, more
revenue generating companies have been asking MarkO Ltd for an IT plan to see if the cloud
company can sustain itself and grow its services base through its technology plans and strategy.
These larger companies want to know if MarkO Ltd. can continue to sustain its growth in
product and service capability over the next several years. Only then will they be willing to
hand over their treasury services to them.
The IT Environment
The IT environment is comprised of four traditional co-location data centers located in Phoenix,
Arizona and Teaneck, New Jersey in the United States; and Paris, France and Pantin, France in
Western Europe. The company has also contracted with a cloud services provider, Amazon Web
Services (AWS), a franchisee of Amazon in mainland China. Each data center (not including the
AWS Center) is comprised of eight racks of equipment including servers, routers, switches,
mass-storage, and data replication and back-up equipment. All centers contain an InterNap
solution (the presence of all major carriers coming into one accessible physical presence).
MarkO Ltd. maintains a 300GB network, with internal 10GB to the desktop. User capability
(access speed) varies based on the customer’s internet speed, nodal population, and latency
(mostly influenced by the software instance’s point-of-presence location relative to the
customer’s website).
Company IT Products & Services
The MarkO Ltd. Treasury Management Service (TMS) product is a pure Software-as-a-Service
(SaaS) play in the cloud. It is a monolithic application, built upon over the last twelve years. It
uses various versions of Java and Java scripts, including versions dating back to v1.5 through
v7.1. Although there is a refactoring project that is done in the background, the primary
development work has always been enhancement to products, followed by bug or engineering
fixes to the product, followed by refactoring or core code clean up. Ultimately, the desire is to
segment this monolithic application into four product areas: cash/liquidity, risk management,
invoicing/supply chain, and hub communication. These areas can be segmented into modular
code instead of existing in one monolithic stack. Additionally, the code uses the Python protocol
as its communication interface. However, this will change to Java, one feature set at a time, until
the entire hub communication interface’s Python code is replaced with Java 7 code.
The Software Operating Environment
The application servers are virtualized using VMWare at a ratio of @ 18:1. The environment
uses active – passive interfaces between server instance reflections in the cluster, and between
reflections at a reflection site for disaster recovery (DR) purposes. Return to Operation (RTO)
time is 4 hours, although most of the larger companies that are customer candidates would like to
see this reduced to 10 minutes or less, indicating a major shift to an active – active environment.
The operating system is Linux Red Hat. It is housed on Dell Blade servers that are currently two
years old. There are five server slots open in two racks for each of the four data centers. Mass
storage is rack-mounted EMC VX 600 virtual drives. There is a mixture of storage attached
network drives, network attached storage drives, and serial advanced technology attachment
(SATA) drives. Each center’s local mass storage houses 3TBs of storage (raw). It also houses
500GB of solid state device storage (SSD) for maintenance utility, logging, etc.
Data is housed in an Oracle 11G data cluster, virtualized but segmented from the application
clusters. Currently MarkO Ltd. uses the Standard Edition (SE) license base, but Oracle’s move to
a different licensing pattern and the shift in its licensing billing will force MarkO Ltd. to move to
SE2 in 2017. At that time, MarkO Ltd. may need to make a decision to move to Enterprise
Edition (EE) or stay with SE2. The difference in pricing and capability still need to be
researched. Along with Oracle 12G, MarkO Ltd. is also planning a business intelligence
capability, utilizing the database environment as one of the data sources. This may mean a
movement to Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI) as a new application. MarkO Ltd. must conduct
research to see if this is a BI tool for future use and monetization, or if another product is more
financially and technically feasible. Some other candidates include Pentaho, Tableau Server,
BizViz, Domo, Birst, and Qlik. The sales and marketing groups have indicated that a BI solution
could be monetized (functionality sold to customers) in two years. It is important to determine
what technology opportunities there may be to manage and leverage the possible Big Data
potential at MarkO Ltd. The IT department has to research, finance, and plan the implementation
of a solution in the coming year in order to meet that projection.
Internal IT Considerations
Internal IT has recently been moved from the finance department to the central IT department.
The Internal IT Group responsibilities include the service and provisioning of laptops, cell
phones, and technology peripherals including office automation solutions, network solutions,
monitoring of wiring closets, WAPs, and facility-based infrastructure. IT has a staff of 12 people
posted in its international offices to service company personnel. 95% of the company’s personal
computing is done on laptops. The company has not implemented Bring Your Own Device
(BYOD) as of yet but will have to plan this for the future. The sales force is currently pressing
the IT department for another alternative to laptops for its highly mobile sales force. Currently,
the office automation software is Google Apps, with an Outlook translator for those that want an
Outlook experience on the desktop. These were appropriate apps when the company consisted of
25 people, but lately, the company executive committee has questioned whether a strong suite
should be introduced. Recently, Microsoft Office 365 was introduced to the company. However,
even today, there are applications running in Google Apps on the Google (Docs) Drive. There is
currently no plan for rolling over these apps to a standard platform.
Business Applications
Additional business apps exist in the areas of enterprise resource programs (ERP), human
resource management systems (HRMS), and sales automation and customer resource
management systems (SA-CRM). The ERP for MarkO Ltd. is OpenERP. However, this was
chosen nine years ago when the company was small and there may be a need to go to a more
robust ERP system. It is a cloud-based system, but the company must consider whether it should
go private cloud, instead of public cloud or inside the company’s data center (an internally
installed, or In-Premise, solution). The HRMS system is Bamboo. However, the HR department
has taken on the job of selecting and implementing nine additional HR solutions to supplement
Bamboo. These include everything from travel reservations, expense reporting, personnel
management, evaluation systems, recognition systems, budgeting and headcount management
systems, and benefits systems. There has been no implementation of single sign-on (SSO) or of
extended active directory services.
The sales and marketing forces have taken it upon themselves to select Salesforce.com as a sales
automation provider and as a CRM provider. Both groups have separate instances of
Salesforce.com with a series of custom HTML5 and Force.com applications already written for
their instances. At this time, there is no connection from Salesforce.com to the ERP system, nor
is there a formal CRM ticketing system in place. Customer service is handled by an outsourced
service manager (ServiceNow), which is a cloud-based customer service provider. Visibility into
ServiceNow is somewhat limited, due to a lack of integration into MarkO Ltd. systems, not
because of ServiceNow’s API’s, which have been provided to MarkO Ltd.
Software Engineering
MarkO Ltd. writes its own software in Java. It has two development centers: Lyon, France and
Minsk, Belarus (Russia). However, one of the centers is agile methodology driven (Lyon) and
the other (Minsk) is Waterfall or SDLC oriented. The IT team is segmented into three major
groups:
The software engineering team is comprised of all the developers and testers in both
Minsk, Belarus and Lyon, France. There is a total of 82 people (45 in Minsk and 37 in
Lyon). Each product engineering team is led by a technical team leader. Each team is
comprised of several software engineers, quality assurance (QA) testers, test automation
programmers, and Scrum Masters (Scrum is the Agile methodology currently employed).
The cost of software development production in Minsk is approximately 76% of that in
Lyon, with a majority of the cost being actual salaried labor. MarkO Ltd. hires few
contractors and has a policy that a contractor that is projected to be in place for more than
one year is converted (or the role is converted) to a full time equivalent (FTE).
The product development team is comprised of product owners for each of the four
products, and business analysts in each of the product silos. There are four product
owners with four business analysts apiece. Currently, there is a VP over both of these
groups as well as a product architect, who was also a co-founder of the company. Both of
these VPs report to the CIO.
The operations and infrastructure group are comprised of eight system administrators,
one DBA, one systems architect, three network analysts, and a technical architect.
The Mission!
You are the new CIO faced with this environment. The CEO and the board are looking to you
and your Strategic IT Plan to solve some of the immediate issues as well as position the company
for long term growth and scalability. You have some clean-up to do in many places, but there is a
severe thirst for new functionality and features in the product. Both Sales and Marketing are
complaining that the software development is too slow and that new features are not being
implemented soon enough. There is a product steering committee that meets once a quarter, but
records indicate that decisions made by this committee are often altered after the decisions have
been made by the committee, vetoed by the CEO, or ignored by the sales staff. You, as well as
the CEO, are hoping that your Strategic IT Plan will get a grip on this environment and control
some of the things holding the company back from its potential. You have six weeks to produce
this plan in whatever format you chose, keeping in mind the segments that must be addressed and
the content of your company’s internal and product/service systems.
