Session 1

Introduction & Strategy

Website

Lecture preparation

Syndicate assignment

Individual assessment

Exam

Questions or concerns?

Housekeeping

Session Topic1 Introduction – Strategy

2 Enterprise Architecture

3 Acquisition Decision

4 Management of the Project & the System Acquisition Life Cycle

5 Commercial versus Open Source

6 Ethics, Rights and Privacy

7 Pulling it all together – Old Mutual Case & Syndicate Presentations

8 Syndicate presentations

9 Syndicate presentations

Course Outline

What are your preconceptions of the course?

What are you wanting to learn?

Maybe we can incorporate some of it

Preconceptions?

You won’t get all the answers here – we’re not even going to cover all the issues – I don’t know all the answers anyway!

We’ll discuss practical stuff - you won’t be inundated with theory or models

You won’t be taught how to program We will grapple with some of the key issues Hype and buzzwords are discouraged – let’s move away from

acronyms - KMACYOYO Critical thinking and straight talking is encouraged Some preparation is a requirement if we are to achieve

anything

Course Objectives

Without knowing your exact ages, it is likely that many of you ….

• grew up in the era of email and the Internet• have had access to electronic media since you were young• speak a different language from your bosses• type faster than you can write• are social media savvy and are able to multi task (tech-wise at least)

This sets you apart from many who are older than you in the work place

How old do you have to be to be “in touch”?

How old before you’re out of touch?

Let’s talk Strategy

Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long-term: which achieves advantage for the

organisation through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to

meet the needs of markets and to fulfil stakeholder expectations.

Where is the business trying to get to in the long-term (direction) Which markets should a business compete in and what kind of activities are involved in

such markets? (markets; scope) How can the business perform better than the competition in those markets?

(advantage) What resources (skills, assets, finance, relationships, technical competence, facilities)

are required in order to be able to compete? (resources) What external, environmental factors affect the businesses' ability to compete?

(environment) What are the values and expectations of those who have power in and around the

business? (stakeholders)Johnson and Scholes

Operational view

IT has to keep the organisation ticking over at an operational level

This is easier said than done, as:• Business continually moves the goal posts• Technology changes on a day to day basis – think:

– Speed, performance and throughput – PCs do today what mini and even mainframe computers did decades ago

– Facebook– Social media– You Tube– Smart phones & tablets - quad core !!!

– Micro SD cards 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 256 GB !!!

IT Strategy

Traditional strategic view

IT must deliver the goals and objectives of the corporate strategy

The board determines the corporate strategy and the IT EXCO develops an IT strategy that will deliver the aspirations and objectives of the above determined corporate strategy

IT is not really a consideration in determining the corporate strategy. The board has an expectation that the various business units will pull together to deliver the strategy.

IT Strategy

Increasingly ….

IT should be a key determinant and enabler of corporate strategy.

This elevates IT’s role from merely implementing the corporate strategy to being a key contributor in the formulation of that strategy.

IT Strategy

What does Michael Porter say?Operational effectiveness is not strategy

“… they are both essential to superior performance, but they work in different ways. A company can outperform its rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve. It must deliver greater value to customers and or create comparable value at a lower cost …”

During the data processing era, the object was to computerise the company’s accounts

Today, in many companies, IT still falls under the CFO! While many accountants have made excellent and dynamic

CEOs, on average, is this a good thing? Does a BCOM / CA qualification equip someone to head

up a key strategic area within an organisation? What training does the average accountant have in IT

or in IT strategic thinking?

The IT legacy in many companies?

1970s1960s 1980s 1990s 2000s

Data processing (accounting, inventory, etc)

ATMs

Internet banking

Commercialization of Email

Online transacting

Facebook

You Tube

Twitter

Punch cards

Green screen

PC

Mobile

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

Commercialization of the Internet

Electronic banking - Nedtel

Depiction of eras – dates are not precise

IT over the ages

Instagram

When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon the prevailing commercial technology was punch cards

If you wrote a thesis in the 70’s, you would have done so on a typewriter

If you had written a thesis in the early 80’s you would have done so on a mainframe word processor

Visicalc (ever heard of it?) was developed in the eighties for PCs – this was the precursor to Excel

Prior to the late nineties most people paid their rates and taxes at the city council’s offices and their phone bills at the Post Office

What does this mean?

80s

HP 9845C – HP 9836OS HP Proprietary75% code rewrite

Continually rewritingeven while developing

IBM PC - ATDOS

0% code rewrite

1990s 2000sWindows

0% code rewrite

1990s 2000s.Net

0% code rewrite

MICROSOFT

Access to information (WWW) Email Banking Travel Online shopping E-Books Social networks B2B Social media

Some of the game changers

Before Cheques Post office OTC ATMs

After Who uses a cheque book? When last did you visit a bank? When last did you receive a cheque? Prohibitive OTC transaction fees !!!

Internet Banking

1990s 2000s

.Brick & mortar

Electronic transactions

OTC & direct dial-up Internet banking

Internet Banking

Online bookings: Transport Accommodation Discounted parking at the airport Theatre Museums

Access to: Images Google street maps – “walk” from the station to your hotel Weather Events General information

Travel

How has Internet shopping changed our lives? Instead of walking or driving from shop to shop to compare

products and prices we now do this at home In many cases, we conclude the purchase on the Internet –

particularly for undifferentiated products such as books, CDs, groceries, etc

We may well still visit the stores, but we do our research at home – think cars, computers, photographic equipment, etc

Companies that are doing this well include Alibaba, Amazon, Ebay, Itunes, Woolworths Food, kalahari.net, Pricecheck, …

Internet Shopping

Some industry players are shooting themselves in the foot by making things too flexible and hence too complicated

Booking with some low cost airlines can be excruciating: Fare Taxes Fees Baggage checking fees Credit card fees Charging per Kg for passengers – Samoa – how are they

managing this?In the end you want to run a mile!

Some Problems

Where will the likes of You Tube, Facebook, crowd sourcing and Twitter take us?

Health Crime fighting Online collaboration Cloud computing SAAS (software as a service) ? ??

Inhibitors in SA – speed, bandwidth and cost

What are the opportunities?

How will companies differentiate themselves going forward?

Banks – can they do it by product alone? Is there still an IT card that hasn’t been

played? This is the big challenge going forward …

Challenge

Using cell phones to communicate market prices which ports are paying what for which fish which markets are paying what for maize

Relaying weather information to rural farmers Pharmaceutical companies – managing patient

drug dosage, usage and consumption

Developing World Opportunities

The challenge is to identify the one thing that your competitors

are not doing, or are doing badly,

and to capitalise on that