Introduction
Nowadays, it is almost impossible to neglect the fact of connection existing between information technology (IT) and business. Academic sources aim at discussing this relation and defining the peculiarities and implications of ITs in a variety of terms: business, people, and technologies. A successful manager has to know how to unite a person and technology to create an effective working process.
Due to the existing social network, the collaboration between individuals and technologies remains to be important. IT management may be defined as the process within the frames of which all possible IT resources are organized in regards to the organizational needs and priorities.
The current paper aims at evaluating IT management in relation to the existing literature and academic references and elaborating the concept in terms of business implications such as opportunities, risks, and different models, human implications such as skills, roles, and organizational structure, and technological implications such as IT strategies, infrastructure, and architecture.
IT Management, Its Essence, and Worth
IT management has a considerable impact on a CIO’s performance and defines the quality of the work that has to be done (Chen & Wu 2011). Due to the current information revolution, entrepreneurs are able to produce services and good with a minimum of physical landscape impact and with a number of possibilities available around the whole world (Kelkar 2010).
Various academic resources offer various definitions of IT management underlying one and the same functions – the necessity to organize the work of a company in a proper way and gain control over all processes (Wu, Yeniyurt, Kim & Cavusgil 2006). In fact, IT management may be defined as a sphere of business, a process, and even a discipline that involves all IT recourses to be managed accordingly to consider the needs and priorities set by a company.
IT management shows the way of how organizations may compliment and promote the support for their multiple business operations. This is why every company strives to have a successfully organized IT department with a number of professional IT managers, who know how to analyze the current situation and offer the best options and alternatives to achieve the desirable professional/working goals (Holtsnider & Jaffe 2012).
It is not enough for people to know that ITs do play a crucial role in their lives. It is more important to realize how to use special ITs and benefit from this type of usage. ITs open a new world of opportunities for people from different parts of the world involved in various spheres of life (Pearlson & Saunders 2012).
Therefore, IT management turns out to be more and more important for consideration as it serves as a guide in the technological implication. The technology aims at facilitating the work performed by ordinary managers and the possible ways of how the interaction between the technological tools and people can be developed (Pearlson & Saunders 2012).
IT management is also the evaluation of the available resources with the help of which the work of a particular company is organized. As a rule, the resources are divided into two types: tangible (characterized by a physical appearance and the possibility to be changed or improved materially) and intangible (characterized as a kind of intellectual properties, some abstract images that play a certain role in the development of a company) (Holtsnider & Jaffe 2012).
Tangible resources are usually the people, working in the IT sphere, computers available for work, networking hardware, etc. Intangible resources are all types of software and data necessary for people to develop their working skills and the work in general. A CIO (a chief information officer) is the one, who is responsible for IT management within an organization and upholding successful planning, developing, budgeting, and training abilities.
Buchta, Eul, and Schulte-Croonenberg (2010) define it as “one of the architects of the company… to contribute to increasing the value of the company – top and bottom line” (p. 12). The role of the workers cannot be neglected as these people prove that the cooperation between people and technologies are possible and that ITs can increase the profits of a company considerably.
Implications for Business
Opportunities
Information Technology (IT) performs a significant function in any organization because it helps to decrease costs, improve communication, improve business strategies, and enlarge the workers’ productivity considerably. This is why IT management opportunities have to be underlined at first to explain why this process is important and why it has to be promoted in every organization gradually.
In fact, IT management is characterized by a number of opportunities within the frames of which it is possible to choose the ways that help to expand a product or service through a variety of places at the same time and widen an ordinary range of customers (Kelkar 2010), to promote integration or avoid the challenges caused by the process, and to consider the demands of a constantly growing market.
Risks
In addition to business opportunities implied by IT management, it is also necessary to underline the threats of the risks for business. As a rule, these are the inabilities to implement appropriate software in regards to employees’ need for the first time, the necessity to study all the time and reflect on the latest technological improvements, or the potential regulatory requirements that have to be kept in mind by each employee and checked by every manager.
Finally, the most unpredictable and unpleasant risk of IT management is the possibility to replace people with the appropriate technologies. As soon as IT manager perform their functions on a high level and find a worthwhile use of every available technology, it turns out to be that people, as a working power, are not necessary.
The more the technological progress is, the less ordinary people can get a chance to have a well-paid job. At the same time, managers should realize that all information technologies are usually vulnerable and have to be replaced or repaired by professionals in time. This is why it is also a risky business to substitute people with technologies and vice verse without a number of available alternatives.
Business Models
It has been proved that IT management contributes considerably the ways of how different business models are developed. As a rule, when an employee is required to create a business model, it is supposed to identify possible target customers, generate revenue, solve possible consumer problems, and other ways that aim at earning money (Kelkar 2010).
Due to the fact that IT management is based on the currently developed technologies, the business models may depend a lot on the achievements done in the sphere of ITs. Employees get a chance to earn more money, overcome the challenges within a short period of time, and involve more customers (Becker, Knackstedt, & Poppelbub 2009).
The example of Saudi Arabia and the constant attempts to create particular principles of business model in IT management prove that it is wrong and useless to follow the standards because each situation requires a unique approach for solution (Al-Gahtani, Hubona & Wang 2007). This is why the impact of IT management on the development of business models is evident and cannot be neglected.
Revenue Models
The dependence of revenue models on IT management is also huge because nowadays the presence of technologies in advertising and promotion cannot be ignored. The companies can set fees for the others, who are going to use the resources. Communication may be fast and more effective in case IT management is successful.
Finally, it is necessary not to forget that any revenue model is a part of a business model, and if the worth of IT management within a business model has been proved, the worth of the same concept in a revenue model is evident indeed.
Implications for People
Roles
The development of IT management influences the distribution of the roles among the employees. This sphere of work, this process, helps to organize and keep the order in the work. To promote this kind of work, a proper distribution of work is necessary, this is why the identification of the roles in a company is an obligatory step to be passed.
For example, there should be people, who are able to search for information, analyze the data, find a practical application to theoretical knowledge, and train people on how to use the technologies. Each role presupposes the development of a particular skill.
Skills
IT management is the sphere of life that requires the presence of a number of skills. For example, to survive the demands and expectations of CIOs (Hanschke 2009), IT managers have to possess the following skills: initiate the processes, get ready for changes, work in teams, investigate and create simultaneously, achieve new boundaries, etc.
Organizational Structure
Nowadays, many companies make use of the available “virtual components” by means of which the role of tangible resources is not as huge as the role of intangible resources (Kelkar 2010). Managers have to spend less time on measuring behavior and defining the roles within a particular company but pay more attention to online services and the principles that have to be followed worldwide via the web.
Confidence
McCafferty (2015) admits that the development of IT management decreases the level of confidence among IT workers. Such aspects like the national economy, the approximate reservation of professional IT workers, and even the inability to believe in a good future within the next five years define the level of confidence and prove that IT management is not perfect and has to be improved considerably regarding the current technological expectations and human needs and wants. IT managers do not have the required option by means of which they can quantify the economic value of their activities and define the level of risks that may disturb (Benarosch, Lichtenstein & Robinson 2006).
Implications for Technology
IT Strategy
An IT strategy is a guide, a kind of a plan according to which IT managers develop their activities and promote the success of their companies (Chew & Gottschalk 2009). Any IT strategy has to touch upon such types of management like human capital, software, hardware, risk, cost, etc. Nowadays, the majority of IT strategies are performed in a written form and distributed via computers within a short period of time.
Architecture
The way of how any system of IT management is created undergoes considerable changes as soon as some IT changes take place. Managers have to learn how to create and distribute the ideas within one particular region as well as worldwide.
Architecture, as a general notion, introduces the list of ideas and demands that have to be considered by the system. As soon as the ITs are used, they have to be properly investigated and analyzed for the employees to realize what infrastructure is more applicable.
Infrastructure
IT management infrastructure is the identification of the necessary assets to support the necessary business like people, networks, systems, etc. To make IT management successful and effective, it is necessary to begin with the educational level.
In other words, good IT managers can be created after they are educated by specially trained professionals, learn the peculiarities of the current technologies, and combine their practical and theoretical knowledge to create a unique system.
Conclusion
In general, considering the facts and definitions offered by the academic sources from various countries, IT management has to be defined as a combination of processes that control the use of information technologies by means of which an organizational work has to be performed meeting the needs and priorities of a company and its workers.
IT management has a considerable impact on the development of business in general and the development of the people’s skills in particular. The way of how ITs are understood by people defines the way of how these technologies can be used. It captivates and educates at the same time when the managers benefit from the already developed technologies, still, constant training and education are important for every successful IT manager and a whole company as well.
References
Al-Gahtani, SS, Hubona, GS & Wang, J 2007, ‘Information technology (IT) in Saudi Arabia: Culture and the acceptance and use of IT’, Information & Management, vol. 44, no. 8, pp. 681-691.
Becker, J, Knackstedt, R, & Poppelbub, J 2009, ‘Developing maturity models for IT management’, Business & Information Systems Engineering, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 213-222.
Benarosch, M, Lichtenstein, Y & Robinson, L 2006, ‘Real options in IT risk management: An empirical validation of risk-option relationships’, MIS Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 827-864.
Buchta, D, Eul, M & Schulte-Croonenberg, H 2010, Strategic IT-management: Increase value, control performance, reduce costs, Springer Science & Business Media, Berlin.
Chen,YC & Wu, JH 2011, ‘IT management capability and its impact on the performance of a CIO’, Information & Management, vol. 48, no. 4-5, pp. 145-156.
Chew, EK & Gottschalk, P 2009, Information technology strategy and management: Best practices, IGI Global, New York.
Hanschke, I 2009, Strategic management: A toolkit for enterprise architecture management, Springer Science & Business Media, New York.
Holtsnider, B & Jaffe, BD 2012, IT manager’s handbook: Getting your new job done, Elsevier, Waltham.
Kelkar, SA 2010, Strategic IT management: A concise study, PHI Learning Pvt., New Delhi.
McCafferty, D 2015, ‘Why confidence is falling for IT workers’, CIO Insight. Web.
Pearlson, K & Saunders, CS 2012, Strategic management of information systems, 5th edn, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken.
Wu, F, Yeniyurt, S, Kim, D & Cavusgil, ST 2006, ‘The impact of information technology on supply chain capabilities and firm performance: A resource-based view’, Industrial Marketing Management, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 493-504.