**2. Part I: technology strategy of national companies**

To make it clear I bring here concept of a National Company. It is the one that has all businesses concentrated within the national boundaries, geographical and judicial. Within these boundaries company has employees and customers who share similar culture, language, traditions etc. In the political world such countries are termed as Nation-States, in the contemporary world most countries fall in this category.

Here I present an overview of the elements that are addressed by the technology strategist.


One needs to remember that although one can discuss these as individual elements they are highly interdependent. A change in one will have ripple effect on the second and will need to change and so on. Yeh et al. [5] studied importance of information system capability as a factor in the success of e-business information technology strategy. The capability refers to both technical and operational aspects of technology. The researchers concluded that such a capability has direct impact on the e-business. Saghaeiannejad-Isfahany et al. [6] researched feasibility of telemedicine in the Isfahan province. They found that medical professionals were in favor of such a system and considered it useful, expressing view that the technical and operational feasibility was required to make investments.

#### **Figure 1.**

*Technology strategy of a national company.*

**Figure 1** shows three elements that are considered while formulating technology strategy. It depicts the technical considerations, operational considerations and economic aspects that need to be taken into account for technology strategy. The technology strategy itself is an outcome of strategizing process. For the sake of understanding, we discuss all three here.

## **2.1 Technical considerations**

While technology developed at a rapid pace many solutions and applications became available to businesses. The ERP, CRM, MRP, Warehouse management etc. working on-premises have been implemented for a long time, the internal data centers and the support teams became part of organization structure. Then the cloud came into picture, enticing companies move to clod based applications. This was an opportunity for the people to rethink technology strategy moving entire or part infrastructure to cloud. Simultaneously internet based success based stories started emerging such as Amazon, Netflix and Spotify. The e-commerce offered a different route to customers.

Today one needs to account for multiple facets of technology:


Points 3–6 above are important for the technology strategy, they relate to business direction and the requirements. As an instance, some forward looking businesses may want to have their customers and vendors on their own internal ERP systems. Some others may consider internal system to be strictly opened only to employees of the organization. Another case where the engineering and construction business may want to work with their contractors and subcontractors on same systems for design and project monitoring system, while keeping financial data strictly kept confidential to the company. Besides, considerations may be substantially different for a national organization from that of a local organization.

#### **2.2 Operational considerations**

The operational considerations are related to technological considerations. While having an in-house data center will need the support structure such as facilities, people and space. The support considerations involve employing own people. That would mean getting correct talent in the organization and retaining it. In the technology space generally opportunities galore resulting in higher turnover of the people. It becomes a major human resource exercise to manage such talent. The technology advances also affect the skills and competency requirement.

On the other side one may consider outsourcing some of these services. If the cloud based managed services are engaged then internal technology human resource requirement go down. Further the managed service vendor guarantees the uptime and quality of service under 'Service Level Agreement (SLA)'. In such situations the technology department/division may require people that are experts in outsourcing monitoring and control.

Consolidating all technology resources in one central locations helps to lower costs, however operationally servicing customers, employees and vendors in other locations to their satisfaction may be challenging. A country such as China, USA and Russia are examples where they operate in different time clocks across regions. That results into providing service from central system to match necessary clocks. It is of course possible to do this and there are companies that operate such centralized systems. Besides, the large companies operate central services such as Human Resources, Finance and Technology. Their locations add the complexity of providing service from central technology system. Mahamed et al. [7] describe a technology based solution titled 'home-based maternal record (HBMR)' explored in Zimbabwe. The researchers have assessed operational feasibility of providing a simple solution in rural areas to improve health record.

There are always possibilities of acquisitions, mergers and divestures. When the businesses merge or make acquisitions there is certain planning that can be done in advance in the technology strategy to ensure smoother integration of businesses. In case of divesture of some business lines or sectors the technology strategy changes turn out to be much more challenging. This is more so as the divesture is announced only when all legal procedures are completed and the necessary approvals are acquired. All these require responding technology matching the timeline set by these events.

#### **2.3 Economic aspects**

A central expectation of the technology implementation is that it creates value for business. The 'value creation' is absolutely vital for investing in technology.
