Question#2:
To: president
From: Ivy, Project Leader, advisory committee
Date: April 1, 2015
Subject: Committee member selection
I am presenting my basic idea of how to select the committee member and explain the reasons why they fit for those positions by way of this memo. As the project leader monitoring the whole system and developing the new system operation, I would like recommend several person to be my committee member and I believe they will contribute most to our new system development.
As required, there are only 5 people in this committee. The first person is me and I am assigned by you as a CIO. My main responsibilities are facilitating the operation as a communicator and negotiator.
I welcome you could join our team because you are the president and have an overview of whole company. You understand the company’s system, regulation and strategies. We may need your right direction and guidance and I believe you could possible to align the new system development to our ultimate corporate goal. You are a suitable person to be a top leader in our team.
Then, I want to recommend our CSO joining our committee. As we know that CSO is a person understands organization’s security at all levels. He is responsible for the security of physical, system and intellectual. He can help us to set the corporate security vision, govern security system implementation, assessing the exposures and risks. Moreover, he may involve into the security policy setting procedure and provide updated and reliable information to prevent potential security risks.
Then, I also want our CKO to be our committee member. My reason is pretty straightforward because our new system must need updated knowledge and technologies to support. We need provide series of training and further education about new system. CKO will help us to facilitate the knowledge delivering and sharing. Since CKO must be capable of required knowledge and have experiences to deliver information. With his joining, our process will be more efficient.
Lastly, I think our CFO is also necessary to join our committee. CFO is an expertise in both financial and accounting area. He knows how to proportionally allocate the budget to each step and he understands financial reporting and related issues, for example, financial misstatement and financial fraudulent behavior. He will give us a good suggestion about how to efficiently use the money on hand and at the same time he can help CSO to ensure the high security and prevent financial risks.
Those above are only my own perspective, please let me know if you have other good suggestions. Lastly, I would like to thank you for your ongoing support in this new system.
Question#3:
Executive Summary:
Charles Schwab & Co., as a big financial services company, recently has encountered alignment trap problem, which slowing down the operation system and increasing the spending cost. Thus, Charles Schwab has increased difficulties of completing their projects as well as faces high competitions from other brokerage houses. Schwab’s ultimate goal is providing customers with additional value while reducing Schwab’s costs to achieve competitive advantage. This article diagnoses the root causes of current problem and suggests other 3 possible alternative patterns. High level of alignment and effectiveness will contribute numerous merits to enterprise.
Current situation:
Schwab’s current IT problem has been diagnosed as “Alignment Trap”, which mainly focuses on the high level of alignment between IT department and its business priorities. It’s a common problem occurring in other companies. In order to achieve their goals, highly aligned strategy brings the complexity of systems, applications and other infrastructure. The company’s various divisions have own independent goals and each section designed to serve own unique needs instead of a whole corporate plan. The company ignores the importance of standardization and has no idea about how to reduce the
