One of the most powerful resources available to organizations is information technology (IT). While most executives recognize their responsibility to ensure that all of the organization's business processes provide optimal value to the organization, they may find it difficult to ensure that the IT infrastructure is aligned with the organization's strategic goals. Without this alignment, IT resources may not be used effectively and may not fully contribute to the organization's business goals. To ensure that an organization's IT strategy is aligned to the business objectives, one has to understand the business objectives, the legacy systems, and new technologies.
In this project, you will complete an audit of the technology and information systems processes in your organization. Focus on hardware, software, networks, databases, security, and people. You will decide the extent to which business functions are being facilitated by the present information technology infrastructure. In particular, you will assess how well the current IT infrastructure can accommodate your organization's business strategy.
Conduct this IT audit for your own organization if you can. Depending on the size of your organization and your access to information, auditing your entire organization may be impractical. As an alternative to using your own organization, you can choose a nonprofit organization, an educational institution, a previous employer, or another organization with which you are familiar. Consult your instructor for approval of your choice.

Conducting a Technology Audit of Your Organization Transcript
The CEO of your organization has asked to you to conduct a technology audit to help him understand and manage his information technology tools and processes as a strategic business resource.
"Our existing IT systems have not always met expectations," he explains. "Unfortunately, some of these suboptimal systems could still be in use because we haven't fully explored suitable alternatives."
"Our technology team and tech company vendors have briefed me on several new technologies and their capabilities, but I'm worried they don't fit into an overall strategy for our organization. If we invest in these technologies and don't recoup the costs, it could be a disaster."
"I want you to become familiar with the current mission, objectives, and operations of the organization. Then I want you to perform an inventory of the current IT infrastructure, development, user-support, and system security, and assess how much they support the business strategy. Finally, research some of the latest technologies and how we could potentially use them."
"I'd like you to a prepare and give me three things: a summary of our organization's business objectives and our effectiveness in meeting them, an assessment of our existing technology, and a technology audit with your specific recommendations for changes to our organization's technology infrastructure. You'll have three weeks to complete this task. I'll e-mail you some additional information later today."
You return to your office and begin research into your organization's mission and objectives. A few hours later you receive an e-mail from the CEO. "I went to a conference last month," the CEO has written, "and heard about some interesting ways to analyze large amounts of data.”
“Apparently, big data analytics,” he continues,”“is one of the fastest growing emerging technologies for business, and it has applications in finance, human resources, supply chain management, and engineering. Maybe we should be thinking about this? Or maybe there is other new tech we should learn more about? I’ll leave it to you to pursue what you think would work for us.” As you read his e-mail, you wonder what other emerging technologies you will learn about after a little more research.
You also begin to ponder the word audit: it implies a complete and careful examination. For this technology audit, you know you'll need to examine all of the important factors that impact your organization's current legacy systems and future technical capabilities, including hardware, software, networks, databases, security and people.

Step 1:
The first step in performing an IT audit that is tied to business strategy is understanding the short-term and long-term goals and objectives of the business. While we expect IT strategies to be aligned to an organization's business strategies, in practice, this is not easy to achieve. The organization typically has made large investments in legacy systems that have been supporting the current business. The organization must balance the maintenance of current business requirements with the need to support longer term strategies, using emerging technologies to improve the competitiveness of the organization.

Step 2
In Step 1, you looked at the state of business. Now in Step 2, you will evaluate the ability of IT to meet business objectives. You should review Technology in Business and Technology Resources before moving on to Appendix D and E. Conduct an inventory of the technology being used in your organization. The technology inventory, Appendix D, provides a structured format for identifying various technologies and their business functions. In this step, you are merely identifying the various types of technology that exist in your organization and their purpose in the organization as they relate to business functions.
Next, you will evaluate the technology for its ability to meet current and future business needs. Does your organization use software for customer relationship management (CRM)? For inventory management? For employee training? What have you learned from this assessment? Review Capabilities of IT Systems and Measuring IT Effectiveness

Step 3
In Step 2, you looked at your organization's business processes and the technology that supports them. Some opportunities for improvement should now be apparent. Every organization has limited resources to invest, and so it is important to prioritize the problem areas that you identified. One way to prioritize issues is by their potential impact to key organizational business processes. You will do this by conducting a risk assessment. A risk assessment can be used as a tool for identifying and quantifying the factors that have the potential to impact critical business goals.

Step 4
Now that you have assessed your organization's current technology inventory and assessed your organization's risk factors, you are ready to review emerging technologies that may benefit your organization.
In almost every aspect of business, technologies have been transforming the way that we do business, improving the productivity and efficiency of organizations across all sectors. Point-of-sale systems are now used by most major retailers and computers are used to manage sales, inventory, employees, and communication. Technology is evolving and new technologies are being introduced all that time that have the potential to improve the competitiveness of organizations. The following are some of the emerging technologies that you should become familiar with before you make your report to the CEO:
• mobile devices
• social media
• cloud computing
• data analytics (big data)
• digital tools (3D printing, wearables, internet of things, etc.)
• virtual and augmented reality
• machine learning and artificial intelligence
You are not limited to the emerging technologies in this list; be sure to consider other technologies you have learned about in your research or from other sources. When you have completed your review of emerging technologies, you are ready continue to the next step, in which you will evaluate these technologies and determine if they might be useful for your organization.

Step 5
Every organization is unique when it comes to assessing how beneficial the implementation of one technology is over another. Many technologies have failed to live up to the potential benefits that were expected from their implementation, so you will want to look at several factors as you proceed through your analysis. Below are some specific questions to consider when identifying emerging technologies that have the potential to impact critical business functions in your organization.
• Can it lower the cost of maintaining your legacy systems?
• Will it enable your organization to improve business processes?
• Will it improve interoperability of systems?
• Will it simplify or standardize IT interfaces?
• Does it define new computing or communication standards?
• Can this technology be used to reengineer a mission critical business process?
• Will employees see it as a solution to their problem?
• Is the organization prepared to deliver any required training on the new system?
Step 6
Now that you have a full understanding of the gaps and opportunities presented by current and future technologies, prepare an executive-level brief (or technology audit report) of no more than 2800 - 3000 words, which communicates the current state of information technology in your organization. Discuss whether or not existing technologies help your organization meet business objectives as well as the impact that these technologies may have on your organization's business model. Ultimately, if accepted, your recommendations would be documented in a technology plan or technology roadmap.

One of the most powerful resources available to organizations is in...