Aligning IT service to business needs

Business needs have changed dramatically over the last twenty years. The challenges for businesses in a global environment include increased negative attitudes toward multinational brands and global corporations, and numerous economic impacts from economic scandals. Organizations need to restore trust in business through governance challenges. In such competitive market environment to remain viable and achieve sustainable competitive advantage requires firms to become information technology-oriented and to use information technology as a means to anticipate fierce competition.

A lot of discussion has taken place as whether information technology provides a competitive advantage to large organizations. The main argument is that since information technology has become cheaper and widely available to any firm, it does not differentiate business practices dramatically from organization to organization. Counter-arguments assert that sustainable competitive advantage is not generated only from information technology, but it considers several functions of a firm like marketing, finance, market research and others.  Information technology is primarily a supportive process, but the efficient and effective use of information technology achieves distinctive firm operations bringing a firm ahead of competition.

The main advantage of using and aligning information technology to contemporary business needs is primarily reduced communication costs. The speed and the ease of achieving immediate communication with many people around the globe reduce and communication costs, while stimulating a substantial restructuring of local and global economy. In this context, the use of information technology enables 24x7 local and global operations.  This implies that any company with a reliable IT infrastructure can operate anytime, anywhere, in an efficient and convenient way.

In addition, the use of information technology discovers counterintuitive aspects. Information technology innovations and the enormous abilities of technology offer new directions and insights to global firms, thus contributing to the global development of business and human kind.

Conclusively, modern businesses have to take advantage of the available technology. Apart from facilitating to run a business, information technology makes organizations aware of new trends or patterns that need to be addressed before potential problems arise. By being proactive, firms gain advantages and the use of information technology leverages intangible and complementary resources such as organizational culture, strategic planning, and supplier relationships.