What is it about?
This is a teaching case that helps students understand how to align business capabilities and IT capabilities, in the context of a clicks-and-mortar business. Faced with financial and time constraints, the specific focal issue for the CIO protagonist is which one project can they do that year: strengthen their business analytics capability, or implement ERP, CRM, SCM, or a data warehouse?
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Why is it important?
In a case-based strategic IT management course, this case addresses a central IT planning issue (how to set priorities given constraints), while fitting nicely into a module in which students confront IT issues in companies that vary in terms of their business capabilities, their IT capabilities, and the alignment of these.
Perspectives
We have gotten a lot of good feedback on this case because the multi-option decision automatically gives rise to a great discussion. Students have very strong (and varied) feelings about their choices, and no choice is categorically wrong (evidence in the case points to one option that is slightly better than the others, but all options are possibilities, if the chosen project is managed appropriately).
Janis Gogan
Bentley University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Peak experiences and strategic IT alignment at Vermont Teddy Bear, Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases, April 2011, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1057/jittc.2011.6.
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