INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AS A KEY TO STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT    pt2       1700w

Strategic Management

Gregory G. and etal (2007) define Strategic management is a process of the analysis, decision, and actions an organization undertakes in order to create and sustain competitive advantages.

Strategic management focuses on building a solid underlying structure of a business and through combining all efforts in the business.

Thus, Strategic management answers as to how the identified business objectives are achieved with what resource a company needs to adapt so as to quickly response to the new challenges.

Hence, an organization must have clear strategy that is developed carefully in order to meet the organizational goal. This responsibility lies on management’s shoulder. Besides, management decision in every strategic issue should be based on tangible evidences and information and such decisions must be taken on time.

In order to make proper decisions on time all necessary information must be available too. Therefore, the strategic management processes need to be supported by information technology systems in order not to miss the open advantage of information technology, mainly efficiency and accuracy.

Understanding the organization

The key to gaining strategic advantages from information technology systems lies in understanding the process of functional requirement gathering, and as to how the functional requirement changes to management information system, installing, implementing, adapting and managing a strategic information system.

A thoroughly understanding of the business requirements are firstly needed before any activities of implementation. Furthermore, being participation is another element of strategic management hence participation is required from all groups of the organization starting from the bottom level employee to top level executives. This helps in understanding business requirement and core issues to include in the development of the management information system. Moreover the commitment of the top level of management is outweigh more as in any other management systems, like Total Quality management.

Therefore, it is very important to have good strategic leader that by no means assures the use of information technology in the strategic process for the company.

Consequently, the leader will set the overall directions and the key criteria for the acquisitions of information systems and information technology. Then after, the next top senior experts should decide on the specific objectives of the intended systems preferably with the consultation of the management information systems professionals either inside or outside the company. In addition, the management of the implementation of information systems should be managed by the information system professionals with key other personnel’s in the business.