Topic C

Since 1980, Society for Information Management (SIM) has been conducting survey of the issues pertaining to IT officers and also Information Technology Management. This survey is done with the help of various Universities, eminent IT professionals and many other research scholars. Here Dr Jerry luftman and Dr Leon Kappelman gave out their explanation of the  concerns for the years 2009 and 2014 respectively.

Top 5 IT management concerns for the year 2009 were:

1. Business productivity and cost reduction

2. IT and business alignment

3. Business agility and speed to market

4. Business process re-engineering

5. IT cost reduction.

And the top 5 Information Technology Management of 2014 were:

1.Alignment of IT with the Business

2.Security or Privacy Issues

3.Business Agility or Flexibility Issues

4.Business Productivity

5.IT Time-to-Market/Speed of IT Delivery

 These concerns can differ from company to company based on their requirement and the priorities. The concern can a single issue or a combination of two issues which is also dependent on our perception of topic. We can see that Dr Luftman and Dr Keppelman perceived the issues according to their research interests and  their knowledge in the subject. The above list of 2009 and 2014, the majority of the concerns are the same.

The list changes due to the change in the market which can be from Internal or External sources. New concerns might arise as a result of negligence towards the issue or have very less knowledge on the impact. A concern might fade away due to constant work in clearing the issue or it can also be a very good solution to the problem or any one time decision such as relaxation of certain laws. Competitive nature of IT industry will leave some of the concerns at top each year as there is always a new way of doing things which might be helpful for that organization to grow

Firstly, the top issue of 2009 according to Dr Luftman is Business Productivity and Cost Reduction still is a concern in the list 2014 and is placed as top 4th concern. This is due to ever evolving market new technologies are very short lived as there a newer and better version is available in no time. Due to this the customers expectations has increased and this is impacting on the productivity of the business. With many options available in the market for a single kind of technology, there is no clear winner and this is also affecting the productivity.

As mentioned above, with new and numerous technologies, business alignment and relation with Information Technology is a huge concern even after five years. Alignment of IT with the Business was second in the concern in 2009 and was the first major concern in 2014. This is because of availability of various IT solutions which are short lived and are very confusing to organization to choose the right solution for its company. Without proper knowledge, it is hard to figure out which one to use. Also it hard to build a software which is compatible for every business problem as different organizations have different issues and hard to get a software which clears all of them.