Discussing specific best practices for making specific decisions, this book offers qualitative and quantitative methods, tools, and techniques for deploying and supporting all kinds of information technology. It identifies the range of technology decisions that managers make and the best practices that define good acquisition, deployment, and support decisions, all in an easy to absorb, conversational tone. The book covers the interrelated business technology alignment areas of business strategy as well as technology applications, architecture, infrastructure, support, acquisition, and organization. Each section ends with a summary of actionable best practices.

Describes the principles and methodologies for crafting and executing a successful business-aligned IT strategy to provide businesses with value delivery.

Offers access to www.technologybestpractices.com web site containing sample planning templates, contingency plans, policies, annual inventory worksheet, and Help Desk. Includes strategic technology planning, and managing and training techniques Shows how to apply technology tools to improve business.

Engineered in Japan presents a unique and comprehensive examination of technology management in the most successful Japanese companies: unique in that all chapters go beyond superficial descriptions of stylized practices to look in depth at particular issues, often contradicting or qualifying the conventional wisdom; comprehensive in that it covers the entire technology life cycle from basic R&D, to development engineering, to manufacturing processes, to learning from the Japanese. Each chapter is based on original research by noted scholars in the field, and identifies technology management practices that have become a major source of competitive advantage for highly successful Japanese companies. Engineered in Japan documents the best practices from such companies as Toyota, Hitachi, Toshiba, and Nippondenso, and discusses how these technology management practices can be usefully adopted in other cultural contexts. Going beyond past observations, the authors all delve below the surface of Japanese management approaches. They look more closely than has been done before at how particular methods are applied, and they identify some new practices that have not yet been highlighted in books on Japanese methods. Presenting recent data that contradict some conventional thinking about U.S.-Japanese differences, they look at old techniques from a new perspective. "U.S. managers can perhaps learn more from the process of creation in Japan and the organizational structures that support innovation," say the editors in their introduction, "than from the particular approaches, tools, and technologies created." A running theme throughout the book is that Japanese managers and engineers tend to think in terms of systems, focusing not just on the parts but on the connections between them. Engineered in Japan is must reading for technology managers and engineers, along with anyone interested in Japanese business, engineering, and management.

This substantially enriched second edition of the book includes evolution of IT applications in business over last five decades, to enable readers in understanding how IT offers newer solutions to modern business. It also discusses the knowledge management systems, various e-business models including e-marketing, Internet architecture and business technology management (BTM), where the focus is on strategic exploitation of IT. The unique arrangement of the contents in the book exposes the readers from the basics of IT (hardware, software and data) to all potential IT applications viz., data and transaction processing, MIS and EIS, business integration, CRM, business intelligence, decisions support systems, data warehouse and data mining, which bring tactical and strategic benefits to business. How technology benefits business, is the core of this book. The book also explains generic contributions of IT to business, enormity of business processes and management functions, what the business expects from the technology, systems audit and controls and software engineering and various techniques which lead to reliable, accurate, and secured deployment of IT applications in business. The text is highly practice oriented and is illustrated with a number of real-life examples and case studies. How IT resources are to be acquired and managed, are also discussed, in great detail. The book is designed for the postgraduate students pursuing business management and computer applications. Besides, the managers in all business verticals and functions will also find this book of immense use to them.

For many CIOs, the value they deliver is elusive. It's not that they do not create positive business outcomes, it's that they have a hard time demonstrating value for the money spent. As a result, many IT leaders find themselves trapped in a vicious cycle of defending their budgets, cutting resources when times are tight, and struggling to keep pace with an insatiable business appetite for innovation. Meanwhile, business leaders increasingly rely on the cloud and other third parties for their technology needs, finding clear tradeoffs between cost, features, risk, and speed of delivery at their fingertips. CIOs must not only compete with these alternatives, they must embrace the new reality of a multi-sourced, service-oriented world.Many IT leaders are taking a more proactive approach to optimizing value. By using shared facts about cost, consumption, quality, risk and performance, hundreds of CIOs have empowered value conversations centered on cost-for-performance, business-aligned portfolios, investments in innovation and enterprise agility. The tradeoffs they've illuminated changed the tone of their meetings and instilled a business mindset in IT decisions.By reading this book, you'll discover and learn the following:-A practical, applied framework -- called Technology Business Management -- for creating and using shared facts to make better decisions about people, technologies, services and investments-A standard taxonomy of resources, technologies and services for CIOs to translate between IT, financial, and business perspectives-Creating transparency to empower decision makers, demonstrate cost-efficiency, shape demand and plan in step with the business-What your technology business model says about the value you deliver and the disciplines you employ-How to shift from project portfolio management to service portfolio management to both improve alignment and adopt more agile approaches to innovation and development-How to optimize run-the-business spending by optimizing infrastructure, outsources, labor and services and rationalizing your portfolios for better alignment-How to improve your ability to change the business by better governing innovation investments and improving enterprise agility-How to create and execute a roadmap for improving data and decision making capabilities over time while reaping rewards at every stage of maturity

Introduction to Business covers the scope and sequence of most introductory business courses. The book provides detailed explanations in the context of core themes such as customer satisfaction, ethics, entrepreneurship, global business, and managing change. Introduction to Business includes hundreds of current business examples from a range of industries and geographic locations, which feature a variety of individuals. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of business concepts, with attention to the knowledge and skills necessary for student success in this course and beyond.