Discuss the Strategic Alignment Model developed by Henderson and Venkatraman (1993) in the context of this case study and highlight why it is relevant to closing the gap between Business and IT so that it more manageable and controlled
James Kudos founded Kudos in 1984 in Melbourne, Australia, with $1,000 and a unique vision of how
technology should be designed, manufactured and sold. More than 4.4 million customers later and with
an annual IT budget of approximately $500 million per year, Kudos has made an indelible mark on the
computer industry—and the world. The company ships more than 1,000 personal computer systems
every day to customers in 120 countries and employs 50,000 people worldwide.
Long known as one of the world’s largest manufacturers of personal computers and laptops, Kudos has
grown into a multi-national hardware and infrastructure provider. It also provides IT services and
solutions across its branches. Rapid growth led to regionally specific expansion from country to country.
Kudos ended up with unique manufacturing facilities, regional order management systems, and
different operating processes and systems throughout the world.
Anne Smith, Kudos’s Vice President of IT Strategy, Technology & Governance, is charged with mapping
out a future direction for the IT giant, with a three-year roadmap driven by Kudos’s Enterprise
Architecture (EA) team. At an enterprise level this roadmap includes five major programs, each of which
involves investments in the tens of millions of dollars—and, in some cases, hundreds of millions of
dollars. Some examples of these programs include: Global Quote to Cash, Global Service Delivery,
Solution Selling, Global Manufacturing Execution, and Recurring and Usage based transactions.
SAP is providing executive guidance for this transformative journey, working closely with Smith and her
enterprise architects to establish a long-term view of the requisite processes, systems and technologies.
Individual projects are undertaken to build general-purpose capabilities, not merely to fulfill immediate
needs.
The Melbourne Branch has been operating with a legacy Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
system and the system is not integrated with its Billing System. Currently, customer representatives
must manually input customer information into the Billing System so that customers can be sent an
Electronic bill. The CRM and Billing Systems are connected to a legacy
that runs on a Legacy Server.
The EA team is responsible for designing the future data, application, and infrastructure components
of Enterprise. The current application and data architecture for Kudos is shown below.
Questions:
1. Discuss the Strategic Alignment Model developed by Henderson and Venkatraman (1993) in
the context of this case study and highlight why it is relevant to closing the gap between
Business and IT so that it more manageable and controlled?
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