Category: 03 – Management in IT
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Monitoring Process
Budgetary control – business looks to future & states what it wants to happen and to achieve, then decides how to get there. How does a department know that it’s performance is satisfactory. Targets set to allow business to know if objectives have been met. Results achieved compared to targets set. Control is effective if…
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Budget Types
Budget Types Fixed budget Can be divided into different categories. Different planning approach to flexible budget. Based on fixed period of time & finding best way to achieve particular objective. e.g. Sales budget shows how sales targets will be met. Flexible budget Can change as business changes. Changing business conditions can result in different outcomes…
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Preparing a Budget
Starting point – identify key factor restricting organisations growth such as sales, human resources, physical space. All other activities determined by constraining factor.
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The Benefits of Budgets
Various potential benefits of budgets & budgeting such as: coordinating business and service operations plan ahead – often reveals need for action which may have been otherwise forgotten learn – effective budgeting systems contain feedback loops motivating managers budgetary targets focus attention Performance judged against targets – must be achievable, realistic, negotiated rather than imposed.…
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Process
Budgeting framework and standard costing framework are similar: plans set performance targets established outcome measures compared against targets corrective action taken if required Organisation should have corporate strategy, based on that: set of business/service strategies operational strategies business/service action plans Organisations within parts of public service which are not businesses or quasi-businesses. These set organisations’s…
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Target Setting
Important financial technique – setting goals & objectives. Managers use financial targets to monitor & assess success of financial control mechanisms. Typical targets deal with sales volumes & expenditure levels, achieved via budgeting techniques. Key principles around budgeting targets revolve around historical comparisons e.g. year-on-year. Able to determine operational trends and determine how to act…
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Different Strategies
Several other strategies need to be developed after business strategy has been agreed. Strategies of interest to I.T. department are: Information strategy – defines information required to support business strategy. States ‘what’ info required, ‘when’ required, ‘where’ requires and ‘who’ requires it. Human resource strategy – defines required human resources: type, location and skill sets.…
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Strategic Planning
Developing a long term plan for organisation to attain goals. Long term is subjective, may mean anything from three or four years to ten years depending on the industry. Involves analysing current skills/competencies of internal resources and comparing to environment in which organisation is competing. Strategic planning will involve analysing, deciding upon and integrating following…
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Legacy Systems
Since Internet became accepted technology, systems developed pre-Internet could be deemed legacy. Organisations may have legacy systems as they have invested in them and may still be critical to operations. May be old or outdated technologies – can have specific requirements e.g. skill sets or support which could bring increased cost.
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Technology Acceptance Model
Commonly used for evaluating technologies. Uses criteria “perceived usefulness” and “perceived ease of use” to model how technology may be accepted in organisation.