IT for the Non-IT Executive
The courses in this Certificate provide business (non-IT) executives with the underlying competencies necessary to succeed in today's dynamic digital business environment, as IT becomes the business.
The digital transformation is bringing profound change to everything we do. Nowhere has this been more apparent than the changes demanded by the pandemic/post pandemic periods (e.g., working at home, online purchasing, business and social process & communications changes) and sustainability. But the impact on every company / industry began well before and will continue long after the pandemic and while essential, goes beyond back-office systems and IT infrastructure.
The digital effect has been and will continue to drive increased revenues and competitive advantage. The advent of emerging technologies (e.g., SMAC, Robotics, Blockchain), and changes to the ecosystem (e.g., competition, interdependent world, sourcing models, natural disasters) has brought intensified attention to IT and digitization, and the evolving role of IT, and the essential demand for strong collaboration among IT and non-IT leaders/organizations.
With the growing global demand for IT and non-IT professionals having the appropriate balance of leadership, management, business, industry, technical, and interpersonal skills, innovative programs like this IT for the Non-IT Executive program have become essential.
As every company becomes a digital company, with an ever-increasing impact on revenues, it is demanding the role of every executive to transform (along with their IT organization). This is what is driving the change in IT sourcing and reporting, and the digital management skills required by the entire organization.
In many cases with more and more revenue generating strategic initiatives reporting directly to the business unit, and more and more of IT infrastructure being outsourced, the centralized IT organization is getting smaller and changing dramatically, and often considered very differently than the decentralized strategic set of responsibilities.
The net is the digital transformation is changing IT and non-IT organizations and roles. We need to understand these changes and prepare for them to succeed.
IT leadership requires a refresh of approaches, thinking and management practices to meet these new challenges. IT and business must co-adapt together. IT must understand the business, and the business must understand IT.
The Entire Strategic Cycle Is Addressed
The focus of the courses is on enhancing and leveraging the harmony across business and IT organizations. To evolve beyond a cost center, IT has to move beyond just supporting the infrastructure and back-office business processes; IT must contribute to business innovation and growth. IT must also adjust to an environment in which stakeholders have greatly enhanced expectations due to the widespread consumerization of technical capabilities. In essence this certificate puts attendees in the role of an organizational leader from strategic, tactical, and operational perspectives, as they work with stakeholders from across the business areas, vendors/service providers, and paying customers/clients to provide demonstrable value.
The description of the 4 required
courses are:
(It is recommended that these courses be delivered live
face-to-face &
online, blended/hybrid
)
1. Managing IT Resources
As firms engage in the digital transformation and focus their investments in leveraging information technology for competitive advantage and performance improvements, it is essential to understand how to effectively and efficiently manage their information technology resources. There are numerous choices to be made about managing IT resources and it is essential to ensure IT and non-IT executives across the firm work in harmony.
Experience has made it clear that firms need well-thought out organizational structures, skills, processes, and decision rights to ensure that the decisions about how to leverage IT investments are well thought out and integrated across the enterprise. This course will help candidates understand the fundamental decisions related to the management of IT resources and the types of organizational structures, sourcing, governance, and processes that will help effectively and efficiently attain value to the enterprise. It concentrates on developing the candidates’ competency in current/emerging issues in creating and coordinating the key activities necessary to manage the day-to-day tactical and operational IT functions of an enterprise, as IT becomes ingrained in all aspects of the business.
Topics include:
- Enhancing IT-business alignment
- Strategic, Tactical, and Operational IT governance practices
- Improving IT's key business processes
- IT organizational structure alternatives
- Demonstrating the value of IT
- Evolving role of the CIO
- Trends in sourcing/outsourcing
- Sustaining systems integration
- Managing emerging technologies and change
- Human resource and skills considerations
2. Strategic Issues in IT
This course addresses the strategic responsibilities and roles of the CIO. It focuses on devising an enterprise strategy for gaining and sustaining competitive advantage through the use of Information Technology and the development and implementation of policies and strategies to achieve organizational goals. The effective definition and use of information systems that enrich the strategic, operational and administrative needs throughout the organization will also be addressed. Approaches to managing the information systems function in organizations and ensuring that information systems strategies and business strategies are integrated will be the focus of the course.
Topics include:
- The strategic role of information technology in a business enterprise
- The elements of a strategy formulation process
- Distinguishing among business/IT strategy frameworks and methods
- Selecting appropriate frameworks and methods
- Applying frameworks and methods to improve analysis in creating a business strategy enabled or driven by IT
- Applying the elements of a strategy formulation process to organizations and industries to create an aligned IT-business strategy for competitive advantage
- Distinguishing between:
- short-term strategies that satisfy immediate business requirements
- longer-term strategies that may provide significant competitive advantage
- Distinguishing between strategic and operational goals
- Creating and evaluating alternative IT strategies and tactics available to management to achieve strategic goals.
- How the CIO functions as a member of the top business management team
3. Managing Emerging Information Technologies
IT organizations must be able to leverage new technologies. This course focuses on how organizations can effectively and efficiently assess trends and emerging SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud) technologies, and analyzing and developing new application systems. Participants will learn how to help their organization define, select, and adopt new information technologies, including promising technologies like Quantum Computing and the Metaverse (a virtual world where billions of people live, work, shop, learn and interact with each other using 3D virtual facsimiles or avatars). This course will introduce candidates to new directions in information systems and effective approaches for evaluating their relevance and applicability to their business environments as well as the new challenges and problems that they present. Candidates will learn about emerging technologies and the latest design trends in data and knowledge, networks and applications in terms of what issues they address and in particular, how organizations can exploit them for competitive advantage.
Topics include: Creating a business case for an emerging information technology, identifying factors affecting the successful adoption of new information technologies, identifying the key attributes, business benefits, risks, and cost factors of a new technology, knowing how to effectively use advanced search and selection metrics for identifying and selecting new technology, describing technology trends that presently drive or are expected to drive the selection of new technologies over the next decade and providing organizational structures and frameworks that guide the enhanced adoption and capitalization related to what new technologies and approaches can offer.
4. IT Leadership
Leadership is a critical success factor for any endeavor. Leadership sets the direction and vision that gives hope and energy for the success of the enterprise. Authentic Business-IT leadership requires each individual to be able to conceive and communicate a vision, have contextual awareness, to be self-aware, to demonstrate their character, capabilities and style as well as to maintain credibility by obtaining buy-in, managing expectations, ensuring outcomes and constantly communicating to a variety of stakeholders.
While there is no cookbook for being a successful Business-IT leader there are a number of common patterns and approaches taken by those who have the most success in the Business-IT leadership journey. The course is built around three themes those successful Business-IT leaders have found to be critical:
- Business-IT Leadership Challenges: Being able to recognize and understand how Business-IT leadership differs from generic leadership.
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Situational Awareness: Business-IT leadership is extremely dependent on the situation being encountered. Being able to assess the situation and make the proper adjustment to leadership style and approach are crucial to success.
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Unique Business-IT Leadership Capabilities: Being able to select and apply a unique set of leadership styles, models, frameworks and approaches that are best suited to the variety of situations the Business-IT leader will face.
The course focuses on how to assess the situation being inherited, how to create an achievable vision and how to lead the organization to that vision. The course identifies the personal and professional foundations for successful leadership in a global context that includes virtual teams and multi-cultures. Rather than presenting leadership concepts, practices and ideas in a generic context, the modules use specific Business-IT leadership approaches and examples relevant to Business-IT.
As organizations accelerate the digital transformation of their industry, they are focusing their investments in leveraging information technology to improve customer/client products/services, while lowering overall costs. In today’s highly regulated, increasingly resource-constrained, and cost-focused environment, it is essential to understand how to effectively and efficiently manage an organization’s information technology (IT) resources. There are numerous strategic, tactical, and operational choices to be made about managing an organizations IT resources and it is essential to ensure that IT and non-IT executives across the organization work in harmony.
Experience has made it clear that organizations need well-conceived organizational structures, skills, processes, and decision rights to ensure that IT investments are appropriately leveraged across the organization, especially when considering the impact of emerging information technologies across every industry.
This course prepares executives by providing a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental decisions related to the management of IT resources for competitive advantage. The course will also provide an overview of current and future information technologies and their potential impact on customers/clients, organizations, and associated stakeholders.
Digital management topics include:
- Deriving IT-business strategies
- Considerations for types of
- organizational structure
- sourcing
- governance (i.e., decision-making and decision rights)
- roles/responsibilities
- processes
- Leverage emerging digital technologies
- The business value of IT
- The definition, concepts, and contexts of leveraging IT for competitive advantage
- Enhancing business-IT alignment
