IT-Business Alignment: The Case of Ethiopian Airlines
Creators: name: Elsa, Taddele
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2019

description: AS IT is becoming the driving force behind relentless change in the business world, organizations are continuously investing on IT both to stay in business and win ever-changing competitive challenges. The benefits of IT can be manifested in the form of reduced costs, enhanced products and services, delighted customers with diversified and personalized services and also strengthened partnership and supply chain management. While business is becoming unthinkable without leveraging IT, scholars argue that IT enable and drive the business if it is aligned with the business strategy. In other terms, to benefit from the potential of technology in highly dynamic business environment, such as an airline industry, IT-business alignment is critical success factor. Based on literature review and the researcher's preliminary assessment, it is noted that the management of IT-business alignment maturity practices are gray area for Ethiopian airlines as there is no defined measurement metrics. Additionally, as anecdotal information indicates the employees are not satisfied with the quality of the IT systems they are using in their respective sections. Due to this, IT investments are not delivering the intended business value. The IT systems are not well integrated to provide seamless business flows and customers are not getting personalized service as the airline industry is currently practicing. Thus, this paper aims to assess the IT-business alignment maturity in Ethiopian airlines. The general approach of this research is a case study in which a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods has been used to collect and analyze data. Based on extensive literature review, a research model was established which constitutes six constructs adopted from previous literature: communication, competency/ value measurement, governance, partnership, scope and architecture, and skills. It is attempted to enrich the research model by conducting an interview with 5 IT and business professionals who are experts in this area. Based on the interview, a construct named IT investment is added. The survey questionnaire and interview outline contents were prepared based on the defined research model by partially adapting from existing literature and developing additional ones as required. The quantitative aspect of the study involved 218 employees from various departments of the organization with different job positions, roles, and work experience. In the qualitative study, Business strategy, IT strategy, SLAs were analyzed. The overall IT-business alignment maturity of Ethiopian airlines is 2.92 which is within the range of level 2 (beginning/ committed process) with partial fulfillment of level 3 maturity (Established Focused process). The result of the document analysis revealed that the corporate business and IT strategy are formulated in aligned manner from the perspective of content, validity and completeness. However, as the finding of the quantitative analysis revealed that the implementation of the already formulated strategy has several limitations which can be seen from the overall maturity level which is 2.92 out of 5. Moreover, the role and benefit of IT should be escalated from business enabler (reducing costs and leveraging investments) to business driver which helps to enhance products and services, enhance executive decision making and also reach the customers. Besides this, Enterprise Architecture should be designed and implemented as already mentioned in the IT strategy document in order to ensure the enhancement of IT-business alignment.