The Power of Convergence: Linking Business Strategies and Technology Decisions to Create Sustainable Success

Citation

Sigala, M. (2012), "The Power of Convergence: Linking Business Strategies and Technology Decisions to Create Sustainable Success", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 313-314. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761211237416

Despite the increased role of technology in the survival and competitiveness of enterprises, numerous technology projects fail while others fall short on delivering the promised benefits. To address this technology paradox, the aim of this textbook is to introduce the concept of convergence and demonstrate its role in enabling the materialisation of technology's business benefits. To achieve that, the authors develop and analyse a model for achieving technology‐and‐business convergence, which draws on the authors' professional experience of many years and on the analyses of several other related case studies.

The book is co‐authored by a team of researchers from the BTM (Business Technology Management) Corporation, and so it benefits from their diverse backgrounds and knowledge. In this vein, the book provides both theoretical underpinning and practical evidence on the importance and attainment of convergence. All chapters provide a good overview, discussion and practical evidence of their major concepts and arguments. Moreover, all chapters follow a very clear and reader‐appealing structure, starting with the discussion of a business case and continuing with the development and analyses of a framework explaining the business problems and concerns of the case study. The textbook is also very reader‐friendly, which is demonstrated in its writing style and language as well as in the very helpful illustrations and figures that it provides. The book is organised in four logically sequenced parts, which represent the process and logical steps for achieving convergence.

Analytically, the aim of the first part, titled “Business Technology Convergence,” aims to explain and place the foundations of the concepts business technology management and convergence. Hence, the first chapter identifies and discusses many failed technology initiatives, which provides the evidence of and the need to address the disconnect between business and technology. In other words, the examples illustrate how many firms have blindly allocated budgets to technology projects without considering the utilisation and exploitation of the technology to support and enable their business strategies and processes. To address this, firms should critically consider how technology projects can be designed in order to deliver business value, which is the focus of the second chapter. This second chapter proposes a maturity advancement plan for achieving technology and business convergence, which builds on collaborative decision‐making for modifying organisational structures, behaviours, norms and practices that integrate and exploit technology capabilities within enterprises. Finally, chapter three provides evidence of the importance of technology and business convergence by analysing examples that show the former's impact on financial performance.

The second part of the book, titled “Convergence in Practice,” includes three chapters showing what convergence means in practice in three different types of organisations: large enterprises, the public sector, and small businesses. Chapter Four offers real‐world examples and explanations as to how large enterprises are overcoming business challenges and creating new opportunities by converging business and technology and creating collaborative management practices. Chapter Five focuses on the public sector and shows how the technology and business convergence framework can help them address their traditional problems of mismanagement. Examples are drawn from managing terrorism, economic wars, and health care. Chapter Six shows how small and midsized firms should develop an appropriate business model for effectively exploiting technologies in order to grow and survive.

The third part of the book, titled “The Impact of Convergence,” consists of four chapters that discuss the application of the core tenets that make up the convergence management approach. Analytically, Chapter Seven introduces the concept “the transformation triangle,” a construct for achieving agility, innovation, and efficiency, and it is the foundation for the next three chapters. Chapter Eight focuses on the concept of business agility by explaining its concept, showing its financial value, and analysing the steps to be followed for creating agile organisations. Chapter Nine examines the concept of innovation, defined as the process of continual reinvention to create new markets and capitalise. The chapter provides several examples showing that it is not the invention of a new technology that matters so much as it is its application, i.e. when embedding technology into business strategies and processes. In Chapter Ten, the authors describe the steps to be undertaken for creating effective organisations from business technology convergence. To achieve that, firms should develop effective processes that provide feedback into the creation and formal expression of an enterprise's business strategy. The chapter also discusses practical ways to decide when to invest, how to channel investments toward appropriate problem solving, and how to ensure that this leads to value.

The book concludes with Part Four titled “Let the Journal Begin.” It features one final chapter that pull it all together and stresses the need to take individual action to drive convergence in an enterprise. Specifically, the chapter revisits the business technology management framework and highlights the need of someone to take leadership role for driving its implementation.

Overall, this is an easy‐to‐read book that consolidates and analyses within a single textbook the major management concepts and frameworks related to the management of technology for driving and materialising its business benefits. The book draws on numerous real life business cases to demonstrate the importance of converging business and technology, plus it provides a holistic framework and practical guidelines on how to achieve the former. The textbook constitutes a useful reading for students studying a course in information systems and/or in business technology management. The book is also equally valuable and useful to professionals wishing to understand the technology pitfalls of other enterprises and to learn how to better align and exploit technologies for enabling sustainable business practices.