Information Technology Strategy

OpenLine Consulting provides dynamic, interactive workshops and trainings for IT staff in two key areas of Information Technology Strategy:

• IT Strategic Alignment: Your organization's success, the satisfaction of your IT staff, and the quality of their choices and decisions is affected by how well they understand and are aligned with your organization's mission and business strategy. Our workshops and trainings deepen your IT staff's understanding of
  
  
  • Business models, competitive forces and competitive strategies in general, as well as how they apply to your organization and industry.
  • Your IT portfolio, and how and why the proper mix of projects, activities, infrastructure and components is crucial for achieving your organization's strategic objectives.
  • How individual perspectives, choices and communication can either hinder or support both your organization's and their own personal success.
  
  
• Information Technology Adoption: Your best IT staff members are constantly keeping abreast of new technologies. But a technology-centric viewpoint can make it hard for them to effectively evaluate whether, when and how these technologies should be adopted by your organization, which can lead to frustration and apathy. Our trainings create value for you and your IT staff members by enabling them to develop the "big picture" of technology adoption, including
  
  
  • How to analyze the operational and competitive opportunities, benefits, and value of new technologies.
  • Technology evaluation, including its maturity and lifetime, and its impacts on your other IT components.
  • Risks due to technology integration and deployment; the processes, structures and approaches needed to address those risks; and the overall costs.
  • Adoption analysis, including how to balance costs, benefits, risks & urgency.
  • How to work with technology-aware business-side peers to stay attuned to the organization's needs and objectives, and increase the value of IT staff members as technologists.

OpenLine Consulting provides training and consulting in the Boston area. The principal of OpenLine Consulting, Dr. Ellis Cohen, teaches Information Systems Technology, Management & Strategy at Boston University's Metropolitan College, both in the classroom and online. He developed and directs the online version of the course, taken by CIS Master's Degree students worldwide. He has been the technology and project leader for a wide variety of research and advanced technology projects, and has been the CTO of two internet startup companies. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University.