IT and Business – who aligns whom?

ASP DOT NET Software companies in India can accomplish great success when key IT resources – physical IT infrastructure mechanisms, technical and managerial IT talents, and information assets − are aligned with business strategy and when suitable structures are used to direct the deployment and effective management of these resources. Over time, history shows that strategic alignment basically means mutual understanding between business and IT as to the strategic nature of IT, governance tools for IT, enterprise architecture development, and strategic path.

Getting the accurate level and type of alignment is essential. Throwing money on occasions of misalignment can be uneconomical and unwise for software companies in India if the basis of misalignment is not linked to the level of IT investment. Concentrating on alignment as a remedy for IT-related problems can be equally uneconomical.

IT Alignment needs greater understanding of interrogations such as:

• If the measurement of IT alignment is based on perceptual dealings of IT and business strategy and perceptions are hypothetically flawed, alignment measures could be similarly flawed.
• Can IT be aligned when the behaviours of individual stakeholders (corporate and business unit IT management, service providers, and IT outsourcers) do not display the same tendency toward the business strategy? IT managers in the same firm might not realise business strategy in the similar way.
• How could stress that arise between corporate and business unit management upset the ability of organizations to accomplish and maintain alignment at both the corporate and business unit levels?

Novel c# software companies in India are fundamentally varying traditional business strategies, allowing organizations to reach across boundaries of distance, time, and function. The upswing of digital business strategy – primarily, strategy formulated and executed by leveraging digital resources, suggests that ‘IT leads rather than aligns with corporate strategy’. The effects of net-enabled businesses is a reduced role for strategic alignment but this is somewhat short-term thinking. The issue lies in the characterization of strategic IT alignment as the degree of IT provision for business strategy. In these instances, misalignment is usually attributable to inadequate or misdirected IT investment where the level of IT investment might be an objective but organizations have simply capitalized on the wrong IT. If the definition of IT alignment is reviewed to reproduce both the extent of IT support for business strategy and the extent to which IT is deployed/leveraged in assisting present and forthcoming business strategy, it may be possible to spot examples of misalignment that are because of underutilized IT abilities.

As organizations digitize their complete businesses and build digital choices to capitalize on future opportunities, business processes that implement business strategy are becoming increasingly dependent on IT. This would then infer that executing digital business strategy is reliant on the capability of firms to leverage IT through business processes, in which case two-way alignment befits a key mechanism through which IT creates value. An organization that holds IT-based digital options but who then nominates to not workout those options – possibly because of scarce market opportunities or modestly because of poor managerial decision making – would be wide-open to misalignment and to the projections of sub-par firm performance.

With the growth of digital business strategy, chances arise for asp.net companies in India to progress understanding of alignment in precise ways:

• The logic of digital business strategy claims that IT alignment may become less significant since IT is the strategy. Hence, IT and business strategy are indistinguishable.
• If the existence of IT shortage and IT underutilization affect the aptitude of organizations to perform their digital business strategies, what are the consequences of two-way strategic alignment for firm performance? Is the relation between two-way strategic alignment and performance toned-down by the level of strategy digitization?
• How do forces (and directives possibly) to boost security in a digital world affect IT alignment?

It is time to revive understanding of IT alignment. How IT alignment has been theorized and measured as well as identifying long-term challenges. Potential paths for future strategic IT alignment comprise many challenges but they also show that there is much that asp dot net companies in India still do not know about IT alignment. Strategic IT alignment has an optimistic future and will likely persist a key area of interest for managers of  software companies in India.

Successful Startup Companies

A lot of software development start-ups in India have entered the industry either establishing an entirely new market or growing in existing markets. Every start-up wants to grow its company to a great success. The path of a journey is from start-up to business to brand. A business becomes a brand when it successfully connects with its consumers either intellectually or emotionally. Following are the ways for start-up to grow to business:

• Solve a problem familiar to you
• Test your guesses quickly
• Build and test a prototype
• Sell it to your initial market
• Expand globally

Although there are many successful start-ups, following are growing rapidly and changing how an existing industry works in the process:
1. Paytm :   

Vijay Shekhar Sharma is a co-founder of Paytm. Life tested him right from the beginning of his journey to become one of the most influential people in the business world today. 

At the very beginning, Vijay along with his colleague, Rajiv Shukla, co-founded One97 Communications Ltd, a mobile value-added services company. But in 9/11 tragedy, their business crashed. His partner left him. He was with no money now. For sustaining his life, he took up a job. But the enthusiasm of doing something of his own keeps his interest alive from inside. And so he founded Paytm with collaboration of application development company in India.

Paytm was launched in December 2010. It started as a prepaid mobile recharge website. He firstly experimented with the three basics of internet- content, advertising and commerce. But the big eureka moment came in 2011 when he first pitched the idea of entering the payment ecosystem in front of his board. And then the first avatar of Paytm, Pay through Mobile, was born, going rapidly onto becoming the next big thing of the start-up ecosystem in India. The main reason behind its success is the trust he built with his customers. He first built a strong 24x7 customer care service to address the worries of customers to enable them to trust the wallet enough to put their money into the hands of the unknown. 

Currently its business is not only limited to recharge but has expanded as online payment platform including mobile recharges, utility bill payment, wallet payment and wallet to wallet and wallet to bank transfers for many leading internet based companies like Bookmyshow, Makemytrip, FoodPanda, IRCTC and many others. Paytm is using Online-to-offline strategy provided by e-Commerce solution provider to grow more and more in business.

2. Snapdeal :  

Snapdeal set a niche for itself in the sphere of e-commerce solution provider in India. In 2010, when Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal wanted to start their own business, they chose an offline couponing business and named it MoneySaver. 15000 coupons were sold in three months and it was time to take the business to the next level.
       

Initially started as an offline business, Snapdeal went online in 2010. It was a bumpy ride in the first few months. Mistakes were made, but lessons were learnt. It is this kind of hard work and diligent attempt to offer the best to the customers that gave Snapdeal its initial success.
      

Today, Snapdeal is one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in India with the largest online market place. In just two years, the company went from scrapping their group coupon business and starting an online marketplace to become a billion dollar company. Its year on year growth is almost 600%. Their values – Innovation, Change, Openness, Honesty and Ownership drive them to press for greater success.

Conclusion:
This article is inspiration for all start-up including software/application development companies in India. Every start-up can grow into business if it has confidence and Never Give Up quality. Though challenges are there, start-up companies can reach to greater success with determination and hard work.

Fitting enterprise systems into systems

Enterprise systems, developed by software companies in India, are used by large companies and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to reorganize and streamline their internal and external operations.

Enterprise systems are used to enable the seamless integration and exchange of information between the several departments within an organization. In order to accomplish this, strictly defined control mechanisms must be in place in the system, which protect the company's data and safeguard the company against unauthorized and unintentional uses of the system. This is perfect for total control; however, is only attainable to a certain degree. The outline of controls in the enterprise system may have unintended organizational consequences, due to organizational necessities. The introduction of an enterprise system increases power differentials, which help to increase control in the organization. This results in amplified rigidity, and a probable decrease in organizational flexibility and resilience. On the other hand, enterprise systems can also cause drift, resulting from the unforeseen consequences of these power differential, as well as from the role of insights of people in resolving a problem within the enterprise system. This decrease in control may serve in some situations as an enabler to organizational flexibility. 

Software companies in India recommend workforces to have decreased or increased authority, as an outcome of assignments of dissimilar authorization levels to carry out jobs in the system. Moreover, people with better knowledge of the system seem to attain authority as more people bank on their proficiency in order to carry out their tasks. Monitoring is another source of influence, where the person carrying out the monitoring is realized to control what the subordinate is performing in the system. Monitoring in this case depends on the accurate assignment of authorization levels to the correct individuals. Thus creation of authorization level shapes in the system, together with the monitoring abilities of the system and the making of proficiency by several actors, leading to the creation of power differentials. These power differentials then delivered to escalate the control in the company. 

An enterprise system can be segregated, based on local contexts of communication, and reform them across time space. This is attained with the widespread nature of the enterprise system, which is configured in a central site. The segregation process then outcomes in increased control, produced by the significance of the configuration of the enterprise system, and the concentration of power in the hands of nominated individuals. As control increases, stiff mechanisms are put, by software companies in India, into place to create the organization more inelastic and robust. As such, the processes and procedures in the company are frozen, and firm rules apply regarding access to and manipulation of company information. Depending on the degree of this stiffness in rules (imposed by the enterprise system), the company may convert into too unbending to respond efficiently to circumstances of change and pressure, and consequently becoming less resilient. Manipulation or soothing of those rules may, still, lead to more elasticity (with the price of fractional loss of control), and hence resilience can truly rise.

On the other hand, an enterprise system can also be understood to integrate. This is accomplished with the scattered nature of enterprise systems, which can be installed with the help of software companies in India, in many locations across time space. As an outcome of the integration, there may be drift because of the influence of unintentional consequences of the system and the role of ethics of people in cracking a problem. This decline in control may serve to increase the resilience of the company, because the workforces operate the system for their individual use and are, therefore, able to react more to change when this happens. On the other hand, when the workforces fully follow the processes and procedures uttered by the system, then there is less or no drift, and the control structures enforced by the system are rebuilt. In this case resilience may actually decrease.

Thus fitting enterprise system into enterprise systems can produce higher rigidity into an organization at the same time it can also increase flexibility depending upon the organization necessities. Software companies in India can configure enterprise systems and its authorization levels as it is asked for.

Reasons behind Merger and Acquisition

Introduction

Mergers and Acquisitions have always kept the attention of economists alive. Mergers and Acquisitions may well prove to be favorable depending on the strategies and approaches adopted, but it would not be factual to say that all mergers and acquisitions have been successful.

Motivations for Mergers and Acquisitions

Companies go for mergers and acquisitions for many reasons. Some of these reasons are good, in that the motivation for carrying out the merger and acquisition is to maximize the shareholder’s value. Unfortunately, other motives are bad, or at least questionable.

Theoretically, software development companies should pursue an acquisition only if it creates value—that is, if the significance of the acquirer and the target is superior if they operate as a single body rather than as separate ones. 

If the expertise of both are amalgamated, it produces synergy.  A merger or acquisition is justified if synergies are linked with the transaction. Synergies can take three forms: operating, financial, or managerial. By applying the rules of synergy effectively, a merger can be made a success.

There are several reasons why companies pursue merger and acquisition. Few of them as explained as follows: 

Increasing capabilities

Increased capabilities might arise from expanded research and development opportunities or more robust IT services and operations. Similarly, many software development companies may want to combine to leverage costly IT services and operations.

Capability might not be a particular area or segment; the capability might come from acquiring a unique and innovative technology platform rather than willing to build it.  Mostly Biopharmaceutical companies are a hothouse for M&A due to the high investment necessary for successful Research & Development in the market.

Gaining a competitive advantage or larger market share

Many firms or companies decide to merge in order to gain a better distribution or to build enlarge the network like so many custom software development companies. A company might want to expand into different market segments or the markets where alike company is already operating rather than starting from the scratch, and so the company decide to merge with the other company.

This business network gives both companies a broader customer base overnight.

Synergy

The commonly used word in Merger and Acquisition is synergy, which is the idea that by combining business activities, performance will increase and costs will decrease. Essentially, a business will attempt to merge with another business that has complementary strengths and weaknesses.

Diversifying products or services

Another reason for merging and acquiring companies is to complement an existing product or service. A company that merges to diversify may acquire some other company in order to reduce the influence of a specific business's performance on its profitability. Two companies may be able to combine their products or services to gain a competitive edge over others in the market. Companies willing to sharpen focus often merge with other companies with deeper market penetration.

Cutting cost

When two companies have similar kind of products or services, merging them can create larger opportunity to reduce or cut down cost. When companies merge, often they have an opportunity to reduce operating costs by integrating and restructuring support functions.

When the total production cost of services or products is lowered as there is increase in the volume, the company thus maximizes total profits.

Growth

Mergers and Acquisitions can give the acquiring company a chance to raise market share without having to do work by themselves - instead, they can purchase a competitor's business for a value or a price. Usually, these are known as horizontal mergers. 

Eliminate Competition

Many Merger and Acquisitions permits the acquirer to eliminate upcoming competition and gain a larger market share. The problem with this is that a large premium or effort is usually needed to convince the aimed company's shareholders to agree to take the offer.

References :

• http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/mareasons.asp
• http://www.cio.com/article/2892329/mergers-acquisitions/reasons-mergers-and-acquisitions-happen.html

E Business – Strategy

ASP DOT NET Software companies in India have belief that progress in e-business will not only deliver economic yields, but it is an important component of business definition and competitive strategy. Still, IT performance research has revealed that the relation between IT investment and enhanced organizational performance is still vague. Again and again, ambiguity and arguments have characterized the e-business regarding what is known and what is not known about its payoff. Strategists fail to capture the indisputability that e-business performance depends upon the convergence of strategic and tactical factors.

Among many established industries, with the help of software companies in India, there is significant evidence of e-business being deployed to accomplish strategic goals. Where this deployment has been most successful, there is a tough scenario that the organization has taken a combined approach that both shapes on the organization's strengths and pays cautious attention to the process of change within the organization. There are two perspectives with this, oneis strategy content – which focuses on unique packages of resources – and second is strategy process – which captures human guidance and e-business implementation. These two perspectives are integrated to develop a more holistic understanding of the underlying drivers of e-business performance. 

In spite of the dot.com downfall, there remains a strong belief among software companies in India that e-business – with its rising potential for generating new transactional prospects between firms, suppliers, corresponding product/service providers and customers – will eventually contribute meaningfully to the future performance of many well-known firms. E-business is more than an instrument but part of an intensely held strategic character that enables them to outpace the competition. Yet, in spite of these high-profile triumph stories many other like wiseset firms have failed to replicate these results. This is not altogether shocking as technology modernization theory predicts that within any population there are significantly more followers than innovators. For those imitators wanting to study from these role models, a number of important queries come to mind, two of which, are:

• Why does performance (precisely that related to e-business) differ between organizations that function within the same line of business and have access to the same information and technologies?
• To what extent are these varianc esessential – that is, driven by firm assets and infrastructure – or intellectual – that is, driven by the principles and obligation of managers to a precise future (in this case a future inferringe-business implementation)?

Both questions are of real-world significance for ASP DOT NET software companies in India because they hit into the organizational thinking that takes place to clarify e-business applications. This reasoning is also of theoretical significance to the information technology (IT) literature in that it underlies the extent to which organizational success is dogged by strategy content and/or process.Although naturally linked to one another, the content and process viewpoints have evolved independently.

Developments in e-business applications and technologies, done by asp.net software companies in India,present many prospects for modern businesses to redefine their strategic objectives and improve or transform products, services, markets, work processes and business communication. The experiential results tell that e-business performance varies as external pressures and capabilities (i.e., human, technological and business) fluctuate. Still, the exact degree of these capabilities is not determined. Most notably, the study shows that variation in managerial opinions, regarding the supposed benefit of e-business, tells much about performance. 

Organizational differences comes out to be a factor forvariation in success or failure of e commerce implementation and its alignment with strategic goals. This principle is perhaps most marked in e-business settings where inconsistent markets, swift technological change and financial limitations strongly effect the organizational reasoning that takes place to determine e-business strategy and the following implications for firm development and existence. 

Secure Online Payment Systems

With the rising incidents of security compromises, it is very important to protect customer's personal information like credit card number, PIN number etc. During online payment process, cardholder's information is obtained which is very confidential and therefore must be protected by merchants using payment system software developed by software development companies in India or globe. However, cyber criminals are targeting merchants' system vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to these confidential information.

To protect cardholder data, five global payment brands, American Express, MasterCard Worldwide, Visa Inc., Discover Financial Services and JCB International launched PCI(Payment Card Industry) Security standards council.

PCIDSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. It ensures that merchants' credit card processing procedures meet certain security requirements as follow to make online payment systems secure:

• Install and maintain firewall configuration to protect data
• Protect stored data
• Restrict physical access to cardholder data
• Encrypt transmission of cardholder data and sensitive information across public networks
• Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data

This PCIDSS applies to all organizations that store, process or transmit cardholder data. Every business that accepts credit card or debit card processing payments and stores, processes and transmits payment card data must meet PCIDSS standard. There are other ways to make online payment systems secure which are as follow:

Authentication:

1. Both parties during online transaction should be able to feel comfortable that they are communicating with the party with whom they think they are communicating. 
2. Applications developed by custom software development companies in India usually perform authentication checks through security tokens or by verifying digital certificates issued by certificate authorities. 

Access Control:

1. The prevention of unauthorized use of a resource like cardholder data.
2. This service controls who can have access to a resource, under what conditions access can occur, and what those accessing the resource are allowed to do.

Data Confidentiality:

1. The protection of data from unauthorized disclosure.
2. The way to ensure confidentiality of cardholder data like credit card number, PIN number is Strong Encryption.
3. Data is kept secret from those without the proper credentials.
4. It is also known as secrecy.

Data Integrity:

1. The assurance that data received are exactly as sent by an authorized entity.
2. It Prevents the unauthorized modification of data during online transactions.
3. Cardholder data travel through multiple routers on the open network to reach their destinations. Online payment systems must make sure that the information is not modified during transaction.
4. It is also known as Anti-tampering.

Non-Repudiation:

1. It provides protection against denial by one of the entities involved in an online transaction of having participated in all or part of transaction.
2. Non-repudiation is usually provided through digital signatures and public key certificates.

Secure Socket-Layer(SSL) protocol:

1. It ensures confidentiality, by encrypting the cardholder data that moves between the communicating parties (customer and the merchant).
2. It also provides authentication of the session partners(customer and merchant), using RSA algorithm.

3D-Secure software:

1. This is developed by software development companies in India.
2. It ties the financial authorization process with an online authentication. This authentication is based on three-domain model.
3. When a transaction is performed using 3D-secure, it starts a redirection to the website of the card issuing bank to authorize a transaction.

Conclusion:

The beauty of the internet is attracting customers from around the world. However, it also attracts cyber criminals and so payment security is very necessary. PCIDSS is a security standard which has to be followed by every organization to secure cardholder data of customers. There are many software available for payment security provided by software development companies in India which facilitates data confidentiality, integrity, authentication, authorization etc.

Financial Management for IT services

Financial management for IT services: 

Financial management is a complex, specialized area orprocess by which IT service providers in india, in software development companies,can calculate, forecast and track costs and income related to IT services. Financial management should be managed and performed by skilled and trained professionals, even within the IT environment.

Purpose

The purpose of Financial management for IT services focuses on reaching the acceptable level of funding to design, develop and deliver the IT services that meet the goals and strategy of the IT organization. At the same time financial management for IT services is a gatekeeper that makes sure that the IT service provider does not commit to services that they are unable to provide. Financial management for IT services maintains the level of supply and demand between the service provider and their customers by balancing the cost and quality of service.

The objectives of Financial management for IT services are as follows:

• To define and maintain a framework to identify, manage and communicate the cost of providing various IT services.
• To evaluate the financial impact of new or existing or changed strategies on the service provider.
• To manage the provision of IT services by securing funding.
• To facilitate good stewardship of service and customer assets, together with amalgamation of service asset and configuration management and knowledge management, to ensure the organization meets its objectives.
• To understand the relationship between expenses and income and ensuring that both are balanced according to the organization’s financial policies.
• To managing and report expenditure on different types of IT service provision.
• To execute the financial policies and practices in the provision of services.
• To account for money spent on the creation, delivery and support of services.
• To forecast the financial requirements for the IT organization to be able to meet its commitments to its customers, and compliance with regulatory and legislative requirements.
• To define a framework to recover the costs of service provision from the customer.

Financial management mainly comprises of three main processes:

Budgeting:

This is the process of forecasting and supervising the income and expenditure of money within the organization. Budgeting also consists of a periodic negotiation cycle for setting the annual budgets and the monthly monitoring of the current budgets.

Accounting 

This is the process that guides the IT organization to account the way its money is invested or used. It includes accounting systems, including ledgers, balance sheets, journals etc. and should be reviewed by trained entity in accountancy.

Types of accounting methods include: 

• Direct cost vs. indirect cost 
• Capital cost vs. operational cost
• Fixed cost vs. variable cost 
• Cost types
• Cost elements
• Cost unit
• Charging

This is the process used to bill customers for the services which are supplied to them. This requires sound knowledge of IT accounting practices and systems.

There are several charging policies (pricing):

• Cost price

Recovery of costs associated with provision of services

• Cost price +

Cost price + a percentage markup value

• Going rate

Deriving charge based on other department’s charges

• Market price

Price charged by a third party provider

• Fixed price

Agreed price independent of actual usage of IT services

IT organizations are increasingly using financial management to assist in the pursuit of:

• Enhanced decision-making
• Speed of change
• Service portfolio management
• Financial compliance and control
• Operational control
• Value capture and creation.

Conclusion: 

An understanding of the cost of IT services to each business unit will allow IT service providers to recover the costs through their services and maintain profitability. Better matching of IT services to business outcomes results in more appropriate and controllable spending models, and more predictable profitability. Thus, each IT service organization in india should have a detailed understanding regarding the Financial management and proper implementation of it.

References :

http://advisera.com/20000academy/knowledgebase/financial-management-services-theory-practice/