Framework for strategic IT decisions

Abstract

Strategic IT decisions have significant impact, but can be rather difficult to formulate in an objective manner. This article takes a fresh look at the e‐business adoption and vendor selection problems, and introduces new concepts to derive a decision‐making framework. The authors present a framework for the adoption of e‐business best practices and IT vendor selection. Development of this framework entailed the utilization of concepts from statistics and forecast verification, and their adoption in the context of the problems presented. A couple of key insights are developed. First, adoption of best practices for e‐business is reduced to three key determinants: the impacts on corporate knowledge management, performance management, and strategic management. Second, the corresponding IT e‐business vendor selection is described, in turn, through three determinants: strengths or capabilities in terms of collaboration and analytics, metrics and reports, and breadth of footprint. The proposed framework can be useful for strategic decision‐making in e‐business enabled enterprises as well as for designing the product strategies of IT vendors, as illustrated through references and examples. The paper takes a fresh look at the e‐business adoption and vendor selection problems, and introduces new concepts to derive a decision‐making framework. Future research needs to further validate the determinants and frameworks via case studies across and within business verticals.

Citation

Ganguly, A.R. and Gupta, A. (2005), "Framework for strategic IT decisions", Handbook of Business Strategy, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 265-271. https://doi.org/10.1108/08944310510557837