Alcan case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Alcan - Case Study Example Moreover, the information integrators try to compete through product or service differentiation rather than cost minimization and business model optimization. Robert Ouelette, the newly appointed Corporate IT Vice President, identified that the Alcan had invested a total amount of $295 million in IT services annually. This huge amount points that the company specifically gives great emphasis on IT projects and IT innovation. Robert also says that there were three major SAP implementation projects representing a combined investment of $500 million in various sectors throughout the organization when he joined the Alcan. These facts indicate that the organization has not taken any initiative to trim down IT costs and thereby to compete on prices. However, the firm strives to obtain information necessary to improve operational efficiency. To illustrate, the company currently works on more than 1000 information systems. The company’s 80% of â€Å"total annual IT budget was spent o n outside services from consulting and outsourcing firms, as well as on equipment and software† (Dube, Bernier, and Roy). 2. The five decision areas of the Alcan are financial applications, architecture, information system solutions, infrastructure planning, and infrastructure shared services. From a thorough analysis, it seems that the organization mainly practices a decentralized IT governance model in these five key decision areas although it deploys multiple governance approaches. The case study clearly indicates that all the 14 resources of the groups responsible for the improvement and promotion of corporate applications were disparate with no centralized management control. Robert states that this group did not show any form of coordinated leadership for carrying out financial applications effectively and there were no well structured common architecture for those applications. In addition, the