MeadWestvaco Corporation

As the CIO of MeadWestvaco Corp, my duties, concerning IT and the business architecture of the organization, are to reevaluate the mode of operation in terms of service delivery and customer satisfaction. As the organization transformation in the IT and business for the last decade has focused on service delivery rather than maximization of profits, my duty would be to transform the IT sector within the organization so that delivery of service shifts from being the priority to being the mechanism of facilitating the priority – customer satisfaction. Besides this, security of the Information System is a notch below the international standards and within the networking, frameworks that our 10 divisions operate on; cyber-attacks are eminent and have the potential of crippling the safe operation of the organization. After all, customers need an e-commerce service that respects the privacy and security of their details.
The Information System and tactical planning would affect the operations and future of MeadWestvaco in terms of customer usability, service delivery, economical strategizing, and marketing stability of the organization.

The IT architecture is one among the crucial entities that an organization needs to work on, if the organization is involved in online, over-network, and remote transactions. The IT architecture predicts the amount of data and support that can be handled at any given moment and the possibility of easing traffic by expansion with increasing customer demands and organizational activities (Spaanberg, 2011).

As a mean of reaching to the customer and maintaining contact between the divisions of MeadWestvaco, a telecommunication foundation would help market the products and services of the organization. Inspite of the objectives of the organization to venture full into the e-commerce, the world is transforming into a digital cell, hence, telecommunication would affect the MeadWestvaco’s marketing and trading tactics.

The business world is a vital environment, when it comes to establishing networks that would allow operations to run smoothly and profitably. For this case, organization needs to collaborate with other organization so that the efficacy of the organization can be established and maintained. Partner relationship management is a means of controlling the roles and significance of various departments both internal and external that have a direct or indirect influence on the organization’s operation. The achievement of this management would affect organizations like MeadWestvaco in assuming string business interrelations that foster success and development.

Currently, the state of the economy, technology, and probably the customer spending routines are all related in various economic constrains that face these areas. As markets flourish to welcome the digital era, information systems have the need to be open to expansion, transformation, and some degree of flexibility, when integration of other technologies is needed. The effect that system development will have for MeadWestvaco Corp will reflect the IT’s department flexibility of welcoming new technologies and serving clients with up-to-date technology.

Information in an organization travels multilaterally. The channel used and the urgency of the messages to be communicated determine the movement of information. Information on the internet is open for everyone as long as it is public in nature. With the intranet and the internet, information is passed through networks upon with web-peers, hackers, and cyber criminals operate in. Information security for MeadWestvaco is a significance shield from attackers and the loss of vital data and business documents. In addition, information security is fully ensured, if the system’s management personnel is designated and given specific responsibilities. This way, the organization would not suffer the risk of losing business strategic plans to the competition.

1. The process of contracting business functions from one organization to another or to shareholders is outsourcing. The effective use of this functionality is that organizations have the advantage of bearing less of unproductive business outcomes, as it has it accruing favorable outcomes. Offshoring is a simple movement or business across the globe. Offshoring is an effective way and strategy of avoiding negative economic impacts in one state and taking advantage of favorable economies of scale in other states. Outsourcing and offshoring planning is effective to an organization like MeadWestvaco in that it outlines the possible outcomes of joint ownership, partnering, direct foreign investment, and marketing in unstable economies. For a case like MeadWestvaco’s, the responsibility of sustainable growth and fair market share depends on the outsourcing and offshoring planning.
2. Business continuity is relevant to a business that has been running for a long period and that has survived both economic and financial crisis. Business continuity depends highly on the issue of strategic planning in terms of operational models that are responsible for both economical and survival means of the business. The models are, then, linked with one another both internally and externally in an effort to eliminate the chances of business disasters. Disaster recovery is security module that puts a standby solution to economical catastrophes like stock market crunch and financial crisis. For MeadWestvaco, business continuity and disaster recovery are planning elements that are responsible for keeping the organization from engaging in risky behavior and running out of business (Xhafa & Bessis, 2011).
3. Risk management is the identification, assessment, and ranking of risks as the effect of uncertain objectives. The risks can be positive or negative, but the aim of the risk management is to coordinate economical application of resources in order to minimize, control, monitor, and eliminate the possibility of unfortunate occurrences. For MeadWestvaco, risk management affects the running of the business with minimal or no risks that could be damaging or unbeneficial.
4. Portfolio Management for a business model refers to both investment management and/or IT portfolio management. Investment management refers to the coordination of asset management in terms of investors and market share opportunities. This management aims at assessing and coordinating the activities of the investment firm with the motives and objectives of the investors. IT portfolio management is the ultimate organizational structuring or monitoring program for enterprise information systems. It is responsible for coordinating larges classes of items as managed by the enterprise information technology capabilities. For MeadWestvaco Corp. portfolio management will affect the way of transacting business in that investments and reinvestments would be coordinated closely by the use of reliable information technology systems, therefore, limiting the chances of uncertain risks.
5. The alignment of IT strategies and business strategies is the IT governance. Its use is to ensure that companies and organizations focus with straying on goals and objectives. It also creates an opportunity for implementing favorable measurements for IT performance in the organization. The stakeholders’ interests, inspite of how diverse they are, are taken care of the IT governance through a database that records the personal or majority interests of stakeholders and making sure they are taken care of. The purpose of this governance is to provide feedback on the overall performance of the IT department, metric needed by management, and the amount of returns IT is giving back to the organization from the investment made.
6. E-business is made of different components that are responsible for the organization of activities from the users of the services to the providers and vice versa. Amongst these components are CRM, SCM, ERP, and EAI.

CRM: Is the Customer Relationship Management and firms to reengineer its organizational vision and culture using it. The aim of the CRM is to transform customer relations into great profitability by providing prospects for repeat purchase rates and reduction of customer procurement costs.

SCM: Is the Supply Chain Management, and its use is to manage all supply chain activities so as to maximize customer value and foster the growth of sustainable competitive advantage. It represents significant efforts by the supply chains to route and cultivate supply chains in the most operative techniques conceivable.

ERP: Is the Enterprise Resource Planning program, used to integrate the e-business programs in order to produce a procedural approach easy for use by customer. The program is mainly used to enhance the connectivity.

EAI: Is the Enterprise Application Integration and is an integration framework that made of technologies and service that create a middle platform (middleware) that enable integration systems and applications across the enterprise.

The above components enable an organization to operate its e-business in terms of coordination of different parts from the order applications to delivery through the specified supply chains.