Intermediate Strategic Plan: IT Infrastructure

Write a 3-page intermediate strategic IS plan for Reynolds Tool & Die. Outline an IT strategy to support the upcoming merger and acquisition planned by the company. Your plan must address timelines, systems integration, and change management. Note that systems integration does not necessarily mean building integrations to move data between systems. You will likely be making decisions on which systems to keep (the parent company's or that of the company that is acquired) and how to consolidate the data, get buy in from the users, get them trained and using what to them will be new systems. You may keep some of Reynolds' software and some of each of the new companies' software. It depends on your analysis.

Also note that you will need to review your week 4 IT budget as this merger and acquisition may require additional purchases and may make some other purchases not necessary.

OUTLINE:

I. Current Assessment of the Merger/Acquired Organization

You’ll need to assess and analyze the IT operations and infrastructure of the organization you are about to merge with and/or acquire. This assessment should include hardware, software, and IT personnel.

II. IT Intermediate Strategic Plan

Based on your assessment, you are to propose an intermediate strategic plan for systems and IT organization integrations. Address these questions:

• Which organization’s IT assets will become the primary enterprise IT solution, and why? Will you integrate the merger/acquisition target into your systems, or will the merger/acquisition IT platform become the primary solution? Your assessment should guide you in this decision.

• What will you need to perform the successful integration by the end of the third business quarter? Will you need outside integrators to assist? Will you need a supplemental budget for new hardware and software, as this merger probably wasn’t included in the annual budget? How involved will the merger/acquisition IT organization be involved in the integration, and will you retain their present IT management structure to lead them?

III. End of Plan and Change Management

An intermediate strategic plan is analogous to a project in that it has a finite life span. Address how you will wrap up the integration; specifically, what your new IT organization structure will look like, how you will deliver services to the new company, and what change management processes you will employ to deliver those services and address cultural changes and potential conflict within the new organization. Remember, there will be new users who will need to learn entirely new processes and tools as the new company moves forward.

Include at least one additional reference in addition to the class text for this assignment.