Essay Sample on Strategic Management: Evaluating Operational Industry & Technology Trends

Introduction

The area of strategic management is an ongoing and dynamic process that evaluates the operational industry of a particular organization. Strategic management defines if a certain idea of business is effective through the assessment of the objectified strategies. In today's world of technology, individuals making strategic decisions must take into consideration the emerging technological trends in the field of IT (Parent, 2005). The growth is crucial, especially in determining the direction the organization is taking in the next five years. Recently, most organizations are implementing technological innovations and developments to integrate with their process of strategic analysis decisions. The new technological innovations have resulted in a significant impact on workplace nature. This is because, through the implementation of the latest technologies, the efficiency process within an organization is increasingly grown. On this account, to benefit from the effects of the makers of strategic decision analysis, it is essential to take into consideration the emerging IT trends.

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A significant strategic decision analysis that is imperative to look out for in the next five years is environmental scanning. It is a strategic analysis management integral phase since the discoveries are utilized as the bases for growing re-engineering or new strategies in the field of business. In the next five years, most organizations will use the GIS (Geographical Information Systems), a generally new technological innovation that is specified to perform environmental scanning- monitoring the organization's competitors, targeted customers, and suppliers. Leveraging will be crucial since it will push organizations to situate itself among other organizations in the market strategically. GIS is purposed to perform environmental scanning to distinguish the adjustments in both the external and internal environments and also the possible threats and opportunities. Overall, in the next five years, numerous organizations will embrace the technology of GIS since, similar to data analytics systems, GIS supports the process of data collection and analysis related to the business environment (internal and external), a fundamental phase in the process of strategic analysis.

Another imperative approach of strategic analysis decisions that play a significant role in any business success and is predicted to be dependent on technology innovations in the next five years is a SWOT analysis. Nowadays, organizations are adopting tools of competitive intelligence to perform a SWOT analysis, for example, SEMrush, which is utilized in collecting data about an organization's competitors' resources and behaviors. Besides, SEMrush can be utilized to forecast the future of the competitors' future trends using the available data. Therefore, SWOT analysis plays a unique role in an organization as it helps a firm to identify the competitors of the organization.

Potential Changes in IT Related to Innovation and Organizational Processes

One certain instance of a potential change impacted by IT is administrative operations reorganizations. A practical occurrence to outline the reorganizations in administrative operations is in the banking industry. In the future, it is profoundly plausible that the banking sector will lessen the expense of serving customers by utilizing technology advancements, for example, ATM and toll-free lines. As a fact, the expense of banking has significantly diminished over the past years, and the pattern is probably going to continue. In 2007, for example, banking costs in comparison while utilizing a human teller, ATM transaction, and internet banking were $2.5, $1, and $0.5, respectively. The decrease in transaction costs is directly due to a decline in the labor amount.

Another potential change impacted by IT related to the organization is the change in the process of communication. Personal applications, websites, and emails have become exceptionally valuable communication tools with the organization's customers. In addition, different from the traditional days where organizational advertisements were conducted in houses of media houses, for example, radio and television stations. It is profoundly plausible that in the next five years, organizations will utilize social media platforms and emails as marketing strategies to reach a broad range of individuals easily and within a short time. IT will permit an organization's stakeholders to share information faster and securely. Enterprises will likewise be able to receive customer feedback through online platforms.

Internal (Online) Information Security Risks and Mitigation Tactics

Irrespective of IT many advantages, privacy is a major internal information security threat due to the increased number of cyberattacks. In today's technology world, it's a common process for people to share sensitive and confidential information through online platforms, which is highly vulnerable to attacks. But this security risk can be prevented/mitigated by implementing a network analyzer server set up that can filter particular passwords and attachments. Also, the setup has the capability of blocking confidential and sensitive information from getting accessed by the unauthorized or third-party person. Apart from sensitive information getting into the wrong hands, another security risk is hackers' exploitation of a person's confidential information by acquiring the information through the utilization of bypass hacking software like Citrix, GoToMyPC, keyloggers, phishing, and terminal services. Enabling stable share and file permissions and tight security controls to manage and maintain the monitoring of real-time logs can assist significantly in mitigating such risks. The last internal information security threat is the usage of insecure networks (wireless). This can be mitigated by setting up an updated firewall to block external attacks or VPN usage for remote connectivity.

External (Building) Information Security Risks and Mitigation Tactics

The common external security risk of information is intruder breakage to an organization building. There are variously reported incidences of outsiders breaking into a building and acquiring access information from an organization's computers. This can be mitigated by ensuring the building and massive security measures protect the organization's servers' rooms. Conducting a thorough screening of organizational employees for verification if they have hidden agendas before employing them is also a mitigating factor. Another building risk is a fire outbreak, which can be mitigated by data backups in a different server room.

Reference

Parent, K. (2005). Let's Collaborate on IT Best Practices The industry should develop a set of best practices for managing information technology systems and not wait for the FDA to take the lead. Pharmaceutical Technology, 29(7), 82