Products Case

• Use of a common development environment for corporate business systems, for e.g. Microsoft’s Sharepoint allows custom development of enterprise wide web-based portals and other IT systems.

• Migration of current products to a new standard platform: Migration is not an event, it is a gradual process and it should be achieved without the business being affected. Outdated legacy systems should be decommissioned and new change should be gradually embraced.

• Introduce process standardization across IT teams: By introducing a common standard, an organization or even a particular department can become efficient and build integrity for its services around its internal customer base.

2.1.3 Stakeholders, Costs, and Value

The stakeholders for this initiative are the business units of Boeing. The value added for Boeing is the integration of product development across business units; Boeings clients will experience faster response times and better customer support by interacting with an integrated environment. The costs associated with this initiative would pertain to establishing and running software development, quality assurance and deployment teams and the purchase of software licenses.

2.2 Optimize existing IT operations

Shift to an optimization paradigm where the focus is on efficient utilization of existing resources to sustain long term cost reduction.

2.2.1 Initiative

An important trend with IT investments involves a greater focus on optimizing existing IT systems as opposed to investing in new initiatives thereby emphasizing on ROI. With the rapid technology diffusion, the ability of IT to provide competitive advantages in an enterprise setting is constantly eroding and thus, Boeing must realign to be efficient rather an effective.

2.2.2 Activities

• Establish a thorough understanding of existing systems and their maturity and assess the value generated from them.

• Plan to streamline existing processes associated with each technology and its use to exploit maximum value for the business and customer.

• Keep IT lean: IT can add immense value by providing cost leadership in a competitive environment. Boeing’s IT organization’s primary mission should be the ability to manage the combination of business and technology change.

2.2.3 Stakeholders, Costs, and Value

The stakeholders for this initiative would be the CIO, IT Operation leads and business teams as the clients. The costs involved in optimizing existing IT resources are not significantly large. Formation of a core process team working along with external consultants would focus on this initiative and thus form the main chunk of the costs incurred.

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