MSIT Theses and Dissertations (2011)

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http://hdl.handle.net/11071/1447

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Browsing MSIT Theses and Dissertations (2011) by Subject "Information Technology"

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    Creating business value with Information Technology in tourism sector
    (2013-11-14) Mwangi, Gachonde O.
    Information Technology deployments and automation in organizations are often associated with many factors in consideration in order to determine whether they will assist the organization realize business value. Especially, tourism players in Kenya have not fully benefited from the value created by deploying Information Technology in the organization. The purpose of this research is to determine which organizational processes and procedures are candidates for automation in order to achieve business value in an organization. A concept to support the research will be derived from these processes and procedures which will form a framework that can be applied across the organization to achieve business value.This research addresses a perpetual problem that faces organizations in tourism of how to improve business value created by Information Technology. The research examines the current organizational workflow of the processes and procedures for various organizations in an approach that clearly shows the inefficiencies created. The objectives are to assist tour operators in Kenya to achieve business value created by the implementation of IT both to the organization and to contribute to the development of frameworks in academic research targeting IT business value. In management, business value is the intangible value in a business, above the value of its tangible assets. This research conducted a workflow examination on various organizations in the tourism sector, and the findings/results have revealed that majority of the manual processes in the organization can be automated to achieve the objectives of this research. An IT framework/model is proposed to aid the translation of these processes into business value namely improved tum-around time, availability of accurate and useful information, effective utilization of organizational resources, efficient organizational processes, improved performance and being competitive. The proposed framework/model in this research combines these model components in an input output procedure ensuring all aspects of the organization have been considered in order to achieve IT business value as the result. The model details the main components, sub-components, effects of presence, absence, outputs and measurement metrics that determines the overall effect of achieving IT business value if an organization adopts the model.
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    Key factors influencing the alignment between information technology and business objectives
    (2013-11-18) Dalal, Mohammed J.
    The need for alignment between IT and Business objectives has been identified by many researchers and practitioners as being of major concern to most organizations today. As a result, there have been quite a number of studies that have mostly covered the meaning of alignment, its dimensions, models or frameworks that can be used to ensure desired levels of alignment and how alignment can be measured. This thesis aims to find out what are the key factors, based on six alignment dimensions i.e. social, technical or intellectual, integrated, strategic, structural and financial that influence alignment of IT and business objectives. The researcher made use of the descriptive survey methodology to collect, analyze and interpret data relevant to the research objectives. A questionnaire with open-ended questions was used to collect the data but through personal interviews conducted by the researcher. Subsequently, the data was qualitatively analyzed through the use of content analysis approach. The research outlines the relationship of the key alignment factors to all the alignment dimensions; including two that have been included by the researcher i.e. structural and financial dimensions. This provides a wider coverage for research especially on the structural and financial dimensions that have previously not extensively been researched on. The study conducted has a direct implication to the Kenyan banking industry. The research provides Kenyan banks with a good view of the value of alignment in the Kenyan context. It also highlights the reasons why most banks have alignment gaps and what can be done to correct this anomaly and eventually result in the successful achievement of corporate objectives. This research provides the first view of key factors that help in ensuring alignment between IT and business objectives within a Kenyan banking institution. The research also outlines for the first time the key factors based on the alignment dimensions. This provides a view of which dimensions contribute the best factors that subsequently have a positive impact on alignment.