The IT Department's Contribution and Time to the Company's Advancement
To keep the company up to date with current infrastructure development needs and capable of tolerating future growth rates, the IT department must play a vital role in driving planning, organizing, and administering IT operations toward the organization's overall aim.
To remain competitive in a dynamic market, to ensure information security, and to maintain the overall integrity of the company, the IT department is responsible for the periodic update and development of the existing system. To achieve these goals, an IT department in an organization needs to employ sufficient time and effort in researching current technology trend, assessing future targets and implementing the changes in a prioritized order. The department should efficiently plan and implement IT development within time and budget. The cost of missing the train of development and adaptation to changes are something that the organization cannot bear and which is why the IT department should remain aware of their responsibilities and remain involved in continuous assessment and research. Few vital activities that the IT division should continue for the organization are:
Fine tuning the current systems to facilitate shared platform for decision making,
Planning and application of overall technical strategy intended at attaining robust security and mandatory organizational result,
Administration of organizational system to facilitate IT employment (MacIver, 2009).
Responses to Bernie Ruben’s Three Questions
The Issue of the Blog Entry
Pretending to be normal and ignorant about the blog entry is the best strategy that the organization can afford right now. Letting Carl Williams know about the blog entry and its status being public are the luxuries that the staff members of the organization cannot afford as it will simply make the situation worse. It is safe to predict that the blog has not gathered much public attention for it is not a popular blog with its few audiences. On the other hand, we can try to convince the blog writer or the owner to remove the entry and help the organization keep its reputation intact.
Policy and Regulation as Relates to Blogging
To prevent the organization from any information leakage, the IVK needs to develop a comprehensive blogging policy that will bar users from imprudently posting sensitive information. All employees need to learn about the privacy of internal information of the company and agree that no information can go to public without proper consent from the authority. Employees need to receive training to develop skills to distinguish between private and public information, and act accordingly. The policy should entitle the IT department review all outgoing traffic from the organization to prevent sensitive information leak. For IVK, it being a financial organization, data integrity is a top priority issue, which the employees cannot cost by their imprudent activities (Austin, O'Donnell, & Nolan, 2016)
Integration of Emerging Technology
Every organization needs to keep abreast with recent IT development to exploit competitive edge and to make the business process swifter and easier to manage. A significant portion of total organization budget goes to IT innovations and advancement, which essences the IT department to keep up with emerging technology and review them to analyze their appropriateness with the business operations. As for IVK, it is under constant threat from its rivals who are always on the toes to exploit newer technologies. Not every new technology is suitable might be suitable for the business; on the other hand, some technologies are better off integrated as quickly as possible before the rivals take advantages of them. To avoid this type of lagging, the IT department should keep a careful eye on the recent IT trends and development not to miss any essential breakthrough technology. They have to have the ability to identify what is good or what is bad for the organization and act accordingly.
Proposed Processes IVK Should Use for Enforcing Infrastructure Technology Standards
To sue infrastructure technology standardization, IVK should follow some processes that are described below:
Management process: to deal with the diverse norms of rising innovations in IT, the management process of the IVK should acquire adequate power that will facilitate implementation of any development innovations against organizational resistance to change.
Decision process: in most of the cases, rising advancement could not be implemented due to poor decision-making skills. A decision-making process is aimed at enabling decision-making authority of IVK to get hands on best possible gauges to measure the factors that are helpful in making right decision to the benefits of the company. Upholding developing advancement principles will be easier this way.
Social networking process: today, social networking is a great feed for news on innovations and advancement. By creating and maintaining a good social media communication channel, IVK can get relevant information about rising advancement and act fast (Jordan, n.d.).
IT Standardization and Innovation in IVK
Few conflicting issues exist between standardization and innovation within an organization for innovation gives flexibilities while standardization is likely to restrict it. For example, for a company like IVK, where the executive directors of different department take their own decision regarding adaptation of newer technology and do not overview the existing infrastructure as a whole. They care less about the compliance and more about their preferences. The need for standardization comes into picture while the matter of overall integration, system upgradation or compliance issues arise. For example, two departments of IVK–accounting and HR–use their own customized software, procured from different sources and developed on different programming platforms. When these two departments need to work together in common functionalities like promotion, incentives, salary involvement, they find it difficult to integrate their effort and achieve collective results. This type of organizations remains involved in constant wastage of time and money that otherwise could have been saved if proper standardization was in place. Again, two different business solutions that are integrated through some innovative measure, face high problems when either of them upgrades; an issue of compatibility arises, which forces the other program, either to disconnect from the previous one and work independently or to wait till new things come (Jordan, n.d.)
Conflicts associated with IT standardization and innovation:
The capability to adopt to the violent situation and flexibility of the IT office gets to be constrained, when the business directors purchase assorted applications. The variety in the organization's IT basis is authorized by the need in IT institutionalization arrangement which in result makes it hard to oversee. The IVK's capacity to adjust the changing business sector decreased as a consequence of the way that for dealing with the unpredictable IT framework, the IT division makes utilization of assets. Therefore, the IVK Company won't have the capacity to respond rapidly to its rivals (MacIver, 2009).
Kid’s Toolkit Approach to Management
A toolbox approach to the management is a timely demand that can be helpful in keeping pace with changing and element authoritative settings. In this regard, kid’s toolkit approach is a best tool for the management, which helps the management analyze the odds of a particular condition happening. It greatly helps in decision making process and accelerate organizational processes. It helps the management keep an open mind to dynamic and changing environment (Austin, O'Donnell, & Nolan, 2016).
References
Austin, R. D., O'Donnell, S., & Nolan, R. L. (2016). Adventures of an IT Leader. Harvard Business Review Press.
Jordan, S. M. (n.d.). THE ADVENTURES OF AN IT LEADER. Retrieved from stevenjordan: http://www.stevenjordan.net/2012/03/adventures-of-it-leader.html
Last Name, F. M. (Year). Article Title. Journal Title, Pages From - To.
Last Name, F. M. (Year). Book Title. City Name: Publisher Name.
MacIver, K. (2009). The Adventures of an IT Leader. Retrieved from information-age: http://www.information-age.com/it-management/skills-training-and-leadership/1046717/book-review%3A-the-adventures-of-an-it-leader
Robert D. Austin, R. L. (n.d.). Adventures of an It Leader. Retrieved from goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5416737-adventures-of-an-it-leader
