Business Intelligence Applied: Implementing an Effective Information and Communications Technology Infrastructure

Reasons to Build an ICT Infrastructure

The notion of organizational fit is key to defining strategic alignment and has been explicated in several ways: to include adaptation (personal-environmental fit), compatibility (individual-organization fit), assimilation (organization-organization fit), and coupling (internal-external fit). Oh Wonseok, in one of the premier academic journals, states that “in the context of organizational research, the construct [fit] is generally understood as ‘congruence, match, agreement, or similarity between two conceptually distinct constructs.’”²

This book takes the approach that the strategic alignment of ICT is the fit between the objectives of an organization and how the organization proposes to meet those objectives using ICT. The fit comes when the business analyst is able to envision the organization, align the ICT implementation with the organizational objectives, and yield ICT solutions that support and augment the organization. Along the lines of the primary strategic orientation of firms, ICT is implemented for three reasons—cost reduction, quality improvement, and revenue growth—each of which has been shown to have a different effect on organizational performance.³ When creating, recommending, or choosing an ICT solution, these reasons should be considered:

• Cost reduction. Firms can attempt to achieve market leadership by reducing cost through a number of strategies. These strategies can include, for example, waste reduction, lower inventories, ...