Business And Information Technology Strategy Information Technology Essay

Business and information technology (IT) strategy has long been recognized as a key issue for managers and has grown in importance as IT has become strategically significant. For any kind of business to be succeeded in the market should follow some strategies. With the growing technological development competition has increase therefore managers or CEO should focus their attention on the information technology. Similarly, Frito Lay business strategy involved information technology. The IT function in every business is about capturing, processing, storing and distributing information or data.

Introduction

Information Technology (IT) is crucial to any business. IT Strategy focuses on strategic IT issues; on how to make IT work for businesses and improve company performance alongside examining ways of exploiting the full potential of information systems from existing and new IT products. High-performance businesses view IT as a strategic asset-a source of both operational excellence and competitive advantage. Frito Lay’s business strategy which also used the IT strategy for the improvement of their sales and to make the information available to its customers.

Overlapping or Similarities between IT Strategy and Frito Lay business strategy

Strategy is a comprehensive plan for accomplishing organization’s goals. IT strategy is similar to Frito Lay business strategy business although the focus is specifically on technology. It is important to plan ahead for the development of your IT systems, which will need to be able to grow and adapt to any changes in business. However, business strategies and IT strategies overlap in some cases are as follows:

Both strategies focus on management using same strategies.

Both strategies act as a tool used for planning the future seems that they are unique.

Both of the strategies are similar in a way that they are regulating a product and its structure simultaneously.

Both of the strategies have a certain goal to reach its ultimate success in a same manner.

Both strategies evaluate their internal and external environment in order to determine a position and market approach meaning that equally they are responsible for gaining success.

Both strategies reflecting the relationship between business strategy and IT strategy making the inference that IT strategy is indeed primarily a business tool (Simons & Davila, 1998; Kantrow, 1980; Haeckel & Nolan, 1993; Amit & Shoemaker, 1993).

In the management perspective of Frito Lay business strategies it mainly at first focuses on management. Management process deals with the activities using resources and how this strategy can be used for achieving business’s goals. Frito Lay business strategy in which incorporated IT used as a critical contributor to the business, focused on improving business value and performance. Both of the strategies combine to make the business successful.

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Both of the strategies are designed to establish a business-driven approach to infrastructure toward the management of it business services. Basically IT helps to identify opportunities for reduced costs, reduced risk, improved quality and greater business value. IT Strategy is a highly prestigious like Frito Lay business strategy focusing on both strategic IT business issues and recent developments in information technology.

Some Related Elements between IT Strategy and Corporate Strategies at Frito Lay

Identifying business elements refers to proclaiming a vision and planning a means of getting there. Though the Frito Lay business related with some elements with the IT especially nature of the organization’s leadership, complexity of the organization’s environment, size of the organization, expertise of planners (Drew et al., 2006) etc. In Frito Lay business strategies earlier it didn’t use the elements. Of the most strategic way how these elements worked as a sound management in every aspects of Frito Lay business should deal with different information technology. With the complexity of the technological change know how IT is now being used widely to take advantage of the competitive market (The daily Star, 2010). The organization environment both of the Frito Lay business and IT sector has faced challenges forward to improving its respective business. Both the size and nature of this two business strategy has greatly impact on the overall value delivery system resulting in the increase or decrease of sales volume.

Frito-Lay used management information system tools include Executive Support System (ESS), Decision Support System (DSS), and Packaging Application Expert (PAX). ESS helps to locate potential problems in maintaining sales levels and market share those are also elements of IT strategy.

Some of the Key Components of Frito Lay’s Plans

There are some of the key components of Frito Lay’s plans that must be reviewed such as

The length of the promotion or Time frame

Promotional and distributional activities

Cost, sales

Decision making process and Operating polices

Productivity and working process

Management process

Organization Structure or infrastructure of the business

Corporate initiatives and their contribution

Technological development, flexibility and their uses

Control processes

Selection of the best business tools

Competition and Production efficiency

Justification of the Key Components of Frito Lay’s plan

Time is important components for the business to succeed in the market. Strategy and Planning services produce a roadmap of clearly defined projects designed to extract more value from existing assets. This roadmap can also be used to support the deployment of critical business-driven projects. If proper information is not readily available to the customers as well as to the manger the firms will suffer a lot.

Promotional activities that communicate the merits of the products and persuade the target customers (Kotler and Armstrong, 2008). Distribution of the sales people among different areas help to achieve maximum productivity and effectiveness.

Focusing on sales Frito Lay’s business can assess its position and its strength. A review of the sales, cost and profit projections for a new product may satisfy the Frito Lay business’s objectives.

Productivity, management process, decision making process can greatly enhance the business in a wide distribution area. Together with the technological innovation businesses go forward with the competitions market. Business goals could be achieved easily with the understanding of business productivity and improving quality. Business information would be dynamic and integrated that should enable line employees and managers throughout the company to access timely and relevant information to support marketing strategy. Frito Lay business later identified these components and tried to implement that result in profit of their business.

Some Strategies

There are a variety of perspectives, models and approaches used in strategic planning. The way that a strategic plan is developed depends on various strategies that would be an effective way to communicate plans to executives, senior management, and team members if used at Frito Lay.

Division of areas: one strategy that may be an effective way to communicate plans to executives, senior management, and team members if each area is subdivided to different small areas. One manager is assign to evaluate performance to the lower team members who will report to the manager.

Organize a management team. Usually the signals that building familiarity among the company’s advisors, employees, area managers, executives to make the communication easier.

Short mission statement. Once the team has been organized, a brief mission statement which outlines the goals for the communications effort. This statement is critical in building consensus among the team members over the future course of action.

Keep communication simple. Keep your internal and external communications simple, direct, and frequent so that everyone is kept informed of your progress. Tell your target publics what you are going to do, do it, and then tell them how you’ve done it. Forthright disclosure is essential

Decentralization: It is actually one end of a continuum anchored. In this type of organization decision making power and authority are delegated as far down the authority. By delegating power and authority systematically from middle and lower level employees a relationship is established accelerating communication throughout a group team. Organization should not only focus their attention on decentralization they also focus their attention on centralization.

Centralization: Sometimes the firm should only focus on the management activities among the higher level authorities.

Identify actions or redress and communicate progress on a regular basis. Prior to communication on a regular basis. By meeting weekly rather than once a month shortened both thought cycle and action cycle to be more in paces changes in the business.

Keep the lines of communication open. Non-management employees or staff may offer valuable insights into alternative courses of action. Encouraging suggestions from the bottom up also helps keep interest and involvement high among audiences that have a stake in the outcome of the crisis, but little into the decision-making process. Keeping the lines of communications open may result in a fresh perspective toward the solution of a problem.

Build on a short-term plan with a long-term proactive communications strategy. Nothing builds interest and involvement like awareness and knowledge. The more your target publics know about you, the more likely they are to want to do business with you. Keeping your audiences informed builds interest and involvement. This translates into knowledge and awareness about a company, its products and services, and a business’s growth and development. A well-planned and skillfully implemented strategic communications program can be a powerful tool for turnaround success.

Engaging in communications can help minimize disruption to a business and its bottom line and help the turnaround manager guide his clients back to business as usual.

Controlling the operating process. Control is one of the main function of the management in h organization. Control helps the firms with a ways to adapt the environmental change, to limit the accumulation of errors, to cope with the environmental complexity and minimize the cost. A properly designed control systems can help anticipate, monitor and respond changing circumstances.

Build up Effective team leadership. Develop leadership and management capability at all levels in the organization from the first-line supervisor to members of the executive team. Both with the Executive Team leader and members of the executive team on an individual basis to help them improve their effectiveness within the team.

Evaluation of the Strategies

After the strategies have been developed then comes the evaluation of the strategies. Evaluation is also very important. Although Flexibility is essential in any situation. Evaluation of the strategies is measured in terms of its feasibility, its satisfactoriness and its consequences. Is your message getting through? Is the media playing your story accurately? Are your target audiences responding appropriately? If your plan isn’t working, don’t be afraid to change or adjust it. Generally if the strategy meets the target it just kept. Maintaining the ultimate target is essentially preferable but it is more likely that some action will be needed to correct a deviation from the target setting. Finally changing is established if it sets too high or too low beyond the reaching goal. Among the strategies these strategies are evaluated to be the effective way to communicate from top line managers to worker level employees are

Effective team leadership

Keep the lines of communication open i.e.; integrated infrastructure information structure

Short mission statement.

Centralization

Decentralization

Controlling the operating process may be effective

Depending on the situation both decentralization and centralization are effective way of communication.

An effective way to use information technology opportunities is through a systematic analysis of a company’s value chain – the series of interdependent activities that bring a product or service to the customer. IT – helping to make sure that technology is not just being pursued for the sake of more technology, but that it’s also moving the company forward. In Frito Lay corporate strategy both departments and work groups are interdependent. They depend each other for information and resources to perform their respective activities. The greater the degree of interdependence between the departments, the more the coordination among themselves (Griffin, 2003). Besides having these things there is some distinct criteria in which information about plan cannot be relayed quickly to the staffs as relayed to the executive staffs. As executives are the most important person in the company and they have to take decision instantly thy receive the information.

With the information technology executives now take any market; and know more about what is going on in the snack category there than the regional competitor who only operates in that market. That is indicating that their information accessibility is not same.

The real benefit of information systems is the energy it brings across the entire company.

Information system developments allow for the centralizing of data, in turn allowing managers of regional operations access to this vast database on the other case staffs can not.. Further, it provides the software to use these technologies in a way that is effective in a distributed processing marketing environment. Result is different

However, management policy now focuses on directed decentralization.  Hundreds of middle managers have freedom and database knowledge to make tactical decisions on local market initiatives. 

Framework That use IT Strategy to Support Frito Lay’s Business

Technological changes have accelerated globalization and have intensified competition and the organizations need to be nimble and agile. Business organizations are aware that information strategy is highly crucial to the success of every business. It is difficult to sustain a business in today’s very competitive and innovative world minus a framework for information strategy, which is the organization’s integrated plan for processing, delivery, and presentation of information.  Hence regardless of the size and nature of businesses, companies invest on IT infrastructure for real-time communication, automation of systems, and other applications. However some organizations fail to optimize the availability and functionality of information technology in managing and delivering information relative to achieving business goals. Business framework for information strategy must always aim to provide consistency, transparency, and quality in business processes that will support success strategy employed by an organization. With a defined framework and integration of business processes and information strategy helps company sustains competitive advantage.

A frame work that will help support IT ultimately Frito Lay business should include

Management Information System (MIS) under which

improve customer service and communicate with customers and suppliers more effectively

cut your costs and streamline business’ operations

increase staff productivity

respond to change more quickly

improve the way to manage, share and use knowledge in business and

business analysis

Now, this frame work will support IT and can be applied to Frito Lay business achieve business objectives. However, it is necessary to continue to develop new information technologies in order to maintain these advantages and develop new ones.  Not only are new ideas on technologies rising, new ideas on how to use these technologies are also apparent.

It is important to understand how these changes are likely to impact upon the business and, in turn, how IT will support such changes. This will ensure that any IT investment you make now is capable of supporting your business and its operations in the longer term.

Some Recommendations

Organizations need to evaluate both their internal and external environment in order to determine a position and market approach. Ideally, an information technology system should be simple for the customer to adopt at the outset, and it will become tightly intertwined with the customer’s daily routine

To accomplish both centralization and decentralization along with introducing new technology Frito-Lay has to change its business culture, organization, and infrastructure etc.

Also, firms have to increase advertising and promotional expenditures, through using the information technology. It is now important to focus on attention on management information systems to grow business and to take monopoly in the market.

Frito Lay business should continue to develop new information technologies in order to maintain these advantages and develop new ones.  Not only are new ideas on technologies rising, new ideas on how to use these technologies are also apparent. One area in particular where we feel an upgrade may be necessary is with the DEX system.

As Frito-Lay used didn’t any training programs or corporate modifications to help implement all their new information technology systems.  And also I found a lot of information (data) was created, but not analyzed well.  The organization and process controls were not structured adequately to handle all the new information.  Management processes and employee mind-sets were not altered either. In this case, recommendation that Frito-Lay develop and implement-training programs, including shared purpose, shared incentive, and top-to-bottom implementation programs.

Formulating strategies and plans to address IT should focus on the macro marketing in which Frito Lay business can use more update technology to attract customers.

Using information technology for new products and services that help clients respond to rapid changes in the marketplace to gain a competitive advantage through ought the market and can be used as a medium of quick communication. It will help organizations improve the management and delivery of their business while reducing costs.

Managers can play a central role in making sure that IT and Business is aligned. It Helps clients unlock the business value of information and use it for competitive advantage to address emerging, industry-specific business opportunities.